“For more than five hundred years, the envoys of civilization sailed through storms and hacked through jungles, startling in turn one tribe after another of long-lost human cousins. For an instant, before the inevitable breaking of faith, the two groups would face each other, staring - as innocent, both of them, as children, and blameless as if the world had been born afresh. To live such a moment seems, when we think of it now, to have been one of the most profound experiences that our planet in its vanished immensity once offered. But each time the moment repeated itself on each fresh beach, there was one less island to be found, one less chance to start everything anew. It began to repeat itself less and less often, until there came a time, maybe a century ago, when there were only a few such places left, only a few doors still unopened. Sometime quite recently, the last door opened. I believe it happened not long before the end of the millennium, on an island already all but known, a place encircled by the buzzing, thrumming web of a world still unknown to it, and by the mesh of a history that had forever been drawing closer” (Adam Goodheart, The last island of the savages, The American Scholar, Autumn 2000, 69(4):13-44).

In ~1296, Marco Polo described them (though he never saw them) as "a most brutish and savage race, having heads, eyes, and teeth like those of dogs. They are very cruel, and kill and eat every foreigner whom they can lay their hands upon." In 1771, an East India vessel passed by their island and sighted "a multitude of lights ... upon the shore" - the first recorded mention of their island. In 1867, an Indian merchantman was wrecked on the reef of the island, and the 86 passengers and 20 crewmen made it safely to shore, whereupon the islanders attacked them with bows and arrows (the Royal British Navy rescued the ship’s company several days later but could find no sign of the attackers). In 1896, an escaped Hindu convict landed on the beach of the island; a search party later found his body, pierced by several arrows and with its throat cut.

In 1974, the island was visited by a film crew that was shooting a documentary titled Man in Search of Man; the natives fired arrows at them, one of which hit the film director in the thigh. In 1981, a Panamanian-registered freighter ran aground on their island, and the crew was attacked by the islanders; the Indian Navy had to send a tugboat and a helicopter to rescue the besieged sailors. In 1991, an Indian government anthropologist made the “first friendly encounter” with them, but only after 20 years of unsuccessful attempts. Jacques Cousteau once tried to shoot a documentary on the islands but was chased away. Shortly after the disastrous 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the Indian government sent a helicopter to ascertain the survival of the islanders who proceeded to shoot arrows at the hovering aircraft to repel it. In 2006, they killed two fishermen who were fishing illegally within range of the island and drove off the helicopter that was sent to retrieve their bodies with a hail of arrows; the bodies were never recovered.

“The Sentinelese (also Sentineli, Senteneli, Sentenelese, North Sentinel Islanders) are one of the Andamanese indigenous peoples of the Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal. They inhabit North Sentinel Island which lies westward off the southern tip of the Great Andaman archipelago. They are noted for vigorously resisting attempts at contact by outsiders. As a result, they may be the most socially isolated people on Earth” (Wikipedia).

“North Sentinel Island is one of the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal. It lies to the west of the southern part of South Andaman Island, and has an area of 72 km². Officially the island is administered by India as part of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands Union Territory (since 1947). Because there has never been any treaty with the people of the island, nor any record of a physical occupation whereby the people of the island have conceded sovereignty, the island exists in a curious state of limbo under established international law and can be seen as a sovereign entity under Indian protection. It is, therefore, one of the de facto autonomous regions of India.

From 1967 on, the Indian authorities in Port Blair embarked on a limited program of attempts at contacting the Sentinelese, under the auspices of the Director of Tribal Welfare and anthropologist T. N. Pandit. These "Contact Expeditions" consisted of a series of planned visits which would progressively leave "gifts", such as coconuts, on the shores, in an attempt to coax the Sentinelese from their hostile reception of outsiders. For a while these seemed to have some limited success; however the program was discontinued in the late 1990s following a series of hostile encounters resulting in several deaths in a similar program practiced with the Jarawa people of South and Middle Andaman Islands and because of the danger of introducing diseases” (Wikipedia).

T. N. Pandit, the anthropologist credited with the “first friendly encounter” with the Sentinelese in 1991 is quoted as stating, "That they voluntarily came forward to meet us - it was unbelievable. They must have come to a decision that the time had come. It could not have happened on the spur of the moment. But there was this feeling of sadness also - I did feel it. And there was the feeling that at a larger scale of human history, these people who were holding back, holding on, ultimately had to yield. It's like an era in history gone. The islands have gone. Until the other day, the Sentinelese were holding the flag, unknown to themselves. They were being heroes. But they have also given up. They would not have survived forever - that, I can reason out. On a scientific basis, we can say that this population might have lived for another hundred years, but eventually. . . Even destruction takes place in the natural course of things; no one can help it, it happens. But here we have been doing it in a very conscious way, knowing full well what the consequences could be. What would be and what could be are the same" (Goodheart, Ibid.).

Article by Bill Norrington. If this subject matter caught your imagination, I suggest that you read Goodheart's full text, as well as the novel "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" by Peter Matthiessen (Vintage, 1983).

In The Devil's Dictionary (1911), Ambrose Bierce defined “boundary” as follows: “In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.” Bierce’s cynical definition has taken on serious dimensions as the Arctic’s polar ice continues to recede with climate change—the five surrounding Arctic states of Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the U.S. are making claims of sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Arctic Ocean’s waterways and its seabed; indeed, Russia planted its flag on the seabed under the North Pole in 2007.

The bottom line, of course, is financial. “The U. S. Geological Survey estimates that the Arctic is the largest source of untapped oil on the planet (McKenna and Scott, 2008). Lucrative fisheries will develop as the ice recedes and the cold-water fish move north. Mining exploration and development could increase as access improves to the Arctic‘s gold, silver, iron and, importantly, diamonds: Arctic Canada is believed to contain 12 to 15 per cent of the world‘s diamonds by value” (source). Furthermore, “Because of global warming, there are predictions that the Northwest Passage could be open for large parts of the summer in as little as 15 years. Critics say that risks turning the Northwest Passage into the commercial sea route that explorers began searching for in the 15th century. The rest of the world is sure to take more notice of a shipping route between Asia and Europe that would knock 5,000 kilometres off the current route through the Panama Canal” (source).

According to current international law, no country owns the North Pole or the Arctic Ocean, and the jurisdiction of the Arctic states is limited to an Exclusive Economic Zone of 200 nautical miles from their coasts. This was reinforced by the 1994 maritime treaty, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which currently represents 158 nations and gives them the power to consensually approve participant’s claims: “Upon ratification of UNCLOS, a country has a ten year period to make claims to an extended continental shelf which, if approved, gives it exclusive rights to resources on or below the seabed. Due to this, Norway (ratified the convention in 1996), Russia (ratified in 1997), Canada (ratified in 2003) and Denmark (ratified in 2004) launched projects to base claims that they have exclusive right to certain portions of the Arctic seabed. The United States has signed, but not yet ratified this treaty” (source).

All existing and forthcoming claims are complicated by the fact that the various countries involved assume different things about the geography of the Arctic region. While Canada’s claim to sovereignty over most Arctic islands is undisputed, the Northwest Passage is another matter; Russia and Canada consider the Northwest Passage to be land that happens to have water on top of it, while the U.S. considers it to be water, full stop.

No matter how these resource claims are resolved, major environmental issues will remain in the balance, if only because the scramble for Arctic access and resources will inevitably pose threats to the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem. “What is certain...is that relations in the North are undergoing a ‘social melting’...that is liable to liquefy all Arctic “nature cultures”...Thus, as Canada liquefies and (re)incorporates its coastlines and internal waters within its national imaginary, it may reclaim an archipelagic identity that has long been abandoned in favour of a continental fixity, an identity that favoured notions of permanence in time and space, with solid and incontrovertible distinctions between land and water, between the developable and the undevelopable, and between the social nature that exists within and the wild nature that exists without” (source).

Article by Bill Norrington

The following is a Feb. 2, 2010 UCSB Press Release titled “Grass Resource Revolutionizes Biodiversity Research”:

Grasses from across the world will be documented in a new resource to help researchers better understand the biology of and threats to these vital species, thanks to a project led by scientists from the University of Sheffield in England, in collaboration with researchers at other institutions, including UC Santa Barbara and UCSB's National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS). The project, funded by Britain's Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), will see experts from the University of Sheffield's Department of Animal and Plant Sciences produce an online resource called GrassPortal, offering public access to evolutionary and ecological data on the world's grass species and greatly expanding the web services currently offered by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

GrassPortal, which is at the forefront of a digital revolution in biodiversity research, will allow any of the 11,000 species of grasses to be defined by its geographical range, climate preferences, and evolutionary relationships to other species. It will offer scientists a one-stop shop to easily access and analyze data on an unprecedented scale, and will be particularly useful for researchers in the fields of climate change, conservation biology, and evolutionary biology. Educational case studies and sample datasets in these areas will also be packaged as research-led teaching resources for university and school students.

GrassPortal's international partners include researchers at UCSB who are helping to assemble the large-scale datasets, such as those derived from satellite sensors, which will be used to describe the environmental conditions where grasses occur. The researchers are Christopher Still, associate professor in the Department of Geography, and Stephanie Pau, a postdoctoral scholar at NCEAS. Commenting on UCSB's role, Still said: "We are excited to collaborate on this project and help enhance the utility of GrassPortal to address a wide variety of scientific questions."

Grasses are present on every continent on the planet, and play major roles in the global economy and ecosystem. They account for most of our staple food crops and livestock feeds, including rice, barley, wheat, maize, millet and sugarcane. Grasses are the main winners from deforestation, and form grasslands which significantly influence our climate by altering the cycling of carbon and water between the land and air. Understanding the evolutionary and ecological relationships between species is fundamental for biology, and it is believed that the same scientific approach used by GrassPortal could be rolled out to cover all of the world's half-million plant species during the coming decade.

Jeff Onsted received his Geography MA in June 2002: “SCOPE: A Modification and Application of the Forrester Model to the South Coast of Santa Barbara County”; and his PhD in July 2007: “The Effectiveness of the Williamson Act: A Spatial Analysis.” Professor Keith Clarke, who chaired both of Jeff’s committees, recently informed us that Jeff has had both works published; the former by Lambert Academic Publishing in November 2009 and the latter by VDM Verlag in December 2009.

According to the Editorial Review of The South Coast Participation Experience: A Modification and Application of the Forrester Model to the South Coast of Santa Barbara County on Amazon.com, “This monograph describes the application of an urban processes model to the South Coast of Santa Barbara County. Called SCOPE (South Coast Outlook and Participation Experience), it is theoretically based on the nonlinear feedback loops and urban relationships innovated by Jay W. Forrester. It is greatly modified from his model, however, per the concerns of many of his critics. The model, which uses Stella modeling software, does not provide a projection or even one single forecast. Rather, it is capable of producing any number of forecasts according to policy switches and dials that the user may manipulate. Given similar assumptions, though, the forecasts indicate less population growth than other county and city agencies. The results of this modeling, therefore, could be of great use for discussion directed at policy decisions.”

Amazon.com’s product description of The Effectiveness of the Williamson Act: A Spatial Analysis states: “In order to conserve farmland, voluntary differential tax assessment programs, such as California's Williamson Act, are widely utilized in the United States and elsewhere. However, despite the tax advantages offered, these programs must compete with the large sums of money that agricultural landowners stand to gain by developing their land. This temptation is exacerbated by difficulties farmers on the periphery of urban areas already face, especially friction with suburban neighbors. This monograph examines just how effective the Williamson Act has been in protecting farmland near urban areas by tracking parcels' entry into and exit from this Act in the path of urban expansion, then using this data to create a future scenario of Williamson Act lands using a cellular automata model. These results create a probabilistic regulatory landscape that is used, in turn, as an excluded layer for urban growth scenarios in the future. This research should be of interest to geographers, planners, policy makers, as well as farmers themselves.”

Dr. Onsted is currently an Assistant Professor of Urban and Regional Land Use Change in the departments of Environmental Studies and International Relations/Geography at Florida International University, Miami. Jeff’s areas of interest include human environment relations; urban growth issues, theory and modeling; land use change science, theory, and modeling; Geographic Information Systems (GIS); agricultural geography and farmland loss; farmland protection; and agroecology. He also happens to have an impressive list of publications!

“I would like to thank you so much for awarding me one of your textbook scholarships for this year! I was so happy when I found out today, and I cannot thank you enough. Textbooks are quite expensive, and this scholarship really helps. I truly appreciate your kindness towards me. I am thoroughly enjoying my Geography 7 course this quarter. I have loved learning more about the world and how oil affects economies, health, and many other aspects of life. I will definitely continue to take geography classes, and cannot wait to learn more.”

The above thank you note is from one of the recipients of this quarter’s Landon Romano Textbook Scholarship, and it exemplifies how effective Landon’s named fund has been in ‘giving back to the department that made a positive difference in his career.’ The scholarship is given out each quarter to undergraduates enrolled in one of our lower division courses to assist in the purchase of their textbooks. To qualify, students are asked to submit a brief statement about why they are taking their introductory Geography class and what they hope to gain from it. There were 25 applications for the award from students taking Geography 3A (Oceans & Atmosphere), Geography 7 (Oil and Water), and Geography 8 (Global Warming) this quarter, and the 3 winners of the $125 awards were:

• Brenden Kung: “Given the current economic and environmental crisis, the topic of energy resources and global warming are constantly being brought up in the news, the classroom, and even day to day conversations. With my limited knowledge on these subjects, I enrolled in Geography 7: Oil and Water to hopefully gain a thorough enough understanding to participate in these debates rather than act as the audience. I am even enrolled in a freshman seminar about energy, which discusses many of the same topics. At the same time, this class also allows me to explore the field of geography as a career.”

• George Stoddard: “Coming into UCSB, I had no idea what I wanted to major in. I am still rather uncertain. This quarter, along with many fellow freshmen, I was unable to enroll in the classes I wanted to take. I even struggled getting enough units to be considered a full-time student. Lucky enough for me however, I stumbled across Geography of Oil and Water. As a freshman in high school, my favorite subject was geography of the world. I found it fascinating; it is such a dynamic study, involving various aspects such as politics, culture, and geology. Perhaps in the midst of such a crisis I will rediscover my love for the study of geography. I am sincerely looking forward to what I will learn from Professor Gautier.”

• Kelsey Tibbetts: “This past quarter I decided to switch out of the Biology major and take more classes that I was interested in. My dad was a Geography major at UCSB and always encouraged me to take a geography course. I have always had a deep interest in the environment and global issues, and this quarter I am happy to have the opportunity to pursue these interests through Geography 7—Oil and Water. From this class I hope to broaden my knowledge of the global oil crisis as well as create my own thoughts regarding solutions to these problems for the future.”

Landon received his BA in Geography at UCSB in 1999, worked for software developers in the Bay area for the next few years, and then went back to grad school and received an MBA from Baylor in 2008. Landon established the Romano Textbook fund in 2004 and continues to support it generously; he has the distinction of being the youngest alumnus of our Department to ever fund a Geography scholarship. Thanks, Landon, from all of us!

Astrolabes are amongst the most sophisticated scientific instruments ever made. Sometimes referred to as an ancient astronomical computer, a “mathematical jewel,” or an analog calculator, the astrolabe is a multi-functional measuring instrument used by astronomers, navigators, and astrologers which enables the user to perform such tasks as telling the time at day or night, surveying, ascertaining the time of sunrise or sunset, determining latitude and longitude, and even producing horoscopes. Any instrument used to measure altitudes above the horizon can be called an astrolabe, although there is a major difference between the classic “planispheric astrolabe” and a “mariner’s astrolabe.”

“Astrolabes are used to show how the sky looks at a specific place at a given time. This is done by drawing the sky on the face of the astrolabe and marking it so positions in the sky are easy to find. To use an astrolabe, you adjust the moveable components to a specific date and time. Once set, the entire sky, both visible and invisible, is represented on the face of the instrument. This allows a great many astronomical problems to be solved in a very visual way... The typical astrolabe was not a navigational instrument, although an instrument called the mariner's astrolabe was widely used. The mariner's astrolabe is simply a ring marked in degrees for measuring celestial altitudes” (http://www.astrolabes.org/).

The planispheric astrolabe was invented in classical Greece by Hipparchus, a 2nd century BC astronomer, or by Appolonius of Perga, a 3rd century mathematician, depending on which source you read. During the Islamic Golden Age (~8th-11th century, while Europe was still in the “Dark Ages”), the Muslims preserved and advanced many of the scientific inventions of classical antiquity, including astrolabes which were used for navigation as well as finding the direction of Mecca. “The first person credited with building the astrolabe in the Islamic world is reportedly the eighth century mathematician, Muhammad al-Fazari. The mathematical background was established by the Arab astronomer, Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius), in his treatise Kitab az-Zij (ca. 920 AD)...In the 10th century, al-Sufi first described over 1,000 different uses of an astrolabe, in areas as diverse as astronomy, astrology, horoscopes, navigation, surveying, time keeping, prayer, Salah, Qibla, etc” (http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Astrolabe).

Improved Islamic astrolabes were introduced to the West with the spread of Islam in Southern Europe from the tenth century on. “Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Zarqālī (Arzachel) of Al-Andalus constructed the first universal astrolabe instrument which, unlike its predecessors, did not depend on the latitude of the observer, and could be used from anywhere on the Earth. This instrument became known in Europe as the Saphaea. The astrolabe was introduced to other parts of Western Europe via Al-Andalus in the 11th century...The spherical astrolabe, a variation of both the astrolabe and the armillary sphere, was invented during the Middle Ages by astronomers and inventors in the Islamic world. The earliest description of the spherical astrolabe dates back to Al-Nayrizi (fl. 892-902). In the 12th century, Sharaf al-Dīn al-Tūsī invented the linear astrolabe, sometimes called the ‘staff of al-Tusi’, which was ‘a simple wooden rod with graduated markings but without sights. It was furnished with a plumb line and a double chord for making angular measurements and bore a perforated pointer. The first geared mechanical astrolabe was later invented by Abi Bakr of Isfahan in 1235" (Wikipedia)

“The astrolabe was widely used in Europe in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, peaking in popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries, and was one of the basic astronomical education tools. A knowledge of astronomy was considered to be fundamental in education and skill in the use of the astrolabe was a sign of proper breeding and education. Their primary use was, however, astrological. Geoffrey Chaucer thought it was important for his son to understand how to use an astrolabe, and his 1391 treatise on the astrolabe demonstrates a high level of astronomical knowledge... The use of the astrolabe declined in the last half of the 17th century. The invention of the pendulum clock made clocks much more reliable, and more specialized and accurate scientific devices, such as the telescope, became available. Astrolabe production continued into the 19th century, particularly in the Arab world. Much like sundials, any instruments made today are for curiosity or fun, although the educational value of the astrolabe is still appreciated” (http://www.astrolabes.org/history.htm).

Article by Bill Norrington

In 2001, Reginald Golledge stated: “Advances in Magnetic Resonance Imagery (MRI) have given some promise for tracking what parts of the brain are used for what functions. There is difference of opinion regarding the value of this technology, but much of the negative criticism is directed towards identifying which parts of the brain appear to be used for emotions such as love or hate, or for aesthetic reactions to concepts of beauty, danger, and fear. Somewhat less controversy is present in the spatial domain, where the 25 year old hypotheses of O'Keefe and Nadel (1978) - that the hippocampus is one's "cognitive map" (or place where spatial information is stored) - is being actively investigated. Neurobiologists may be able to determine which neurons "fire" (or are excited) when spatial information relating to objects and their locations are sensed and stored. If (Nano-Bio-Info-Cognitive Technology) NBIC can develop reliable place cell analysis, the process of "mapping" the human brain could transform into examining the geography of the brain (Golledge, R. G. [2001, December 3-4]. Spatial cognition and converging technologies. Paper presented at the Workshop on Converging Technology (NBIC) for Improving Human Performance, Washington, DC.).

Nine years later, neurobiologists using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have come a step closer to fulfilling Golledge’s predictions. An article in the Nature advance online publication of 20 January 2010 reports that there is “evidence for grid-cell-like representations in humans (which) implicate a specific type of neural representation in a network of regions which supports spatial cognition and also autobiographical memory” (Doeller, C.F., Barry, C. & Burgess, N. 2010. Evidence for grid cells in a human memory network. (doi:10.1038/nature08704). Experiments using fMRI on rats and human subjects led the authors to state: “Our study illustrates the ability to infer neural representations in humans by using fMRI in conjunction with single-unit recording in behaving animals, promising a coherent understanding of behaviour at the neural and systems levels. The observed grid-like representations support spatial memory and are found in a circuit of regions which markedly overlaps the network for autobiographical memory and imagery. These types of regularly repeating representation may provide a clue to the neural basis of autobiographical memory, perhaps encoding temporal as well as spatial context for combination with parallel networks representing non-spatial information.”

The aim of such studies is to determine how and where information is encoded, stored, and used in human cortical systems. Hopefully, such an understanding eventually will allow the geography of the brain to be “mapped,” as Golledge envisioned. “Externalizing cognitive maps is one of a set of useful ways for comprehending the actions and behaviors of humans. Geographers, in particular, have sought to obtain spatial products and then examine them to explain human actions and activities or behaviors in space” (Golledge, Ibid.). Such examinations may provide what Prof. Kostas Goulias refers to as “potential lessons for efficient processing of space-time data and our expectation of reaching a better understanding of human-environment interaction that involves personal and next of kin biographies.” These and related lines of enquiry are being pursued by several disciplines at UCSB, particularly at the Brain Imaging Center, the Sage Center for the Study of the Mind, the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, and the Center for Spatial Studies (spatial@ucsb). The ultimate goal, to quote the Sage Center, “is both highly ambitious and refreshingly simple: when you understand the mind, you understand the human condition.”

Article by Bill Norrington; thanks to Prof. Goulias for suggesting and contributing to this article.

Grad students Micah Brachman, Emily de Moor, Amy McNally, and Keely Roth have been accepted as 2010 Luce Fellows by the Henry Luce Foundation. According to Christy Henzler, the UCSB Luce Fellowship Coordinator, the new cohort of fellows consists of 26 students from six departments and programs (Anthropology, the Bren School, Geography, Earth Science, Physics, and Ecology, Evolution & Marine Biology). The Luce Environmental Science to Solutions Fellowship Program is designed “to educate Ph.D. students on the full scope of environmental issues, from the identification of important environmental problems to the implementation of solutions.” Fellows each receive $6000 per year over 2 years and may apply the award to “a broad range of activities to enhance their educational experience.”

The diversity of our geography Luce fellows highlights both the interdisciplinary strength of our department and the integration of cutting edge geographic methods. Micah Brachman works on the California transportation network, investigating evacuation and emergency response capabilities with advisor Rick Church. According to Micah, "the transportation system plays a vital role in all four stages of emergency management: preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. My research is centered on modeling the potential impacts of both man-made and natural disasters." Keely Roth has been investigating Geographic Information Science and Terrestrial Biophysical Sciences under Dar Robert's supervision; in her research, Keely uses remote sensing to map plant species across ecosystems, and she is currently studying the links between ground-based and remotely sensed measurements of plant phenology (the timing of life cycle events). Amy McNally (primary adviser Catherine Gautier) studies the role of river basin development and water infrastructure in shaping economic development, ecosystem vitality, and environmental health (e.g., access to clean water and sanitation). Amy addresses these issues through the integration of remotely sensed land use, land cover data, and other emerging indices of water use and availability; simulations guided by economic geography, location, and systems theory; and high resolution climate data for use in rainfall-run off models. Emily de Moor's work on Disease, HIV, and Conservation in Protected Areas in Western Africa was highlighted in a prior post.

According to the UCSB Marine Science Institute web site, Luce Fellows will receive training in informatics at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) based at UCSB, they will participate in a two-year Luce Environmental Working Group at NCEAS, and they will receive training in communication of science to policy makers, media, non-governmental organizations, resource managers, and industry. The fellows are encouraged to participate in the University of California’s Washington, D.C. or Sacramento programs and to refine proposed environmental solutions that emerge from the working group's activities, based on feedback from practitioners, including elected officials and other policy makers.

H. Christopher Luce of the Henry Luce Foundation is quoted as saying: “As part of our nationwide endeavor to enhance environmental education, the Henry Luce Foundation is pleased to support UC Santa Barbara's novel, interdisciplinary, and hands-on approach to training our nation’s future leaders to tackle some of our world's pressing environmental challenges.” Kudos to our four such future leaders!

Santa Barbara ranks number 4 on a list of the top 10 U.S. cities with the least weather variety, but reports of a small tornado touching down in nearby Goleta on Tuesday, January 19, are a reminder that it doesn’t pay to be totally complacent about our local weather. When Santa Barbara County fire crews arrived at the reported site near Phelps and Pacific Oaks roads, they found no injuries but some minor destruction—a large tree was uprooted, roof shingles were ripped off several houses, and a fence was blown down: “There is evidence that suggests a small tornado might have briefly touched down, but it was not witnessed,” according to a statement from the fire department.

While the recent Goleta incident was relatively minor, Santa Barbara has had at least one major tornado in times gone by. “According to historian Walker A. Tompkins, one of Santa Barbara’s least-known historical events involves a terrible cyclone which struck the town on the last day of the year in 1878. There was an appalling loss of property and one hundred lives taken.” Walker tells the story in It Happened in Old Santa Barbara (Sandollar Press, Santa Barbara, CA, 1976). “The dawn of that memorable December 31 found Santa Barbara whip-lashed by a torrential southeast rain which turned the city’s unpaved streets into a quagmire. Gale force winds and violent thunder over the mountains and sea canceled many plans for New Year’s Eve watch parties in Santa Barbara churches and homes.”

“By nightfall the wind had increased to a gale, piling up heavy surf on the beaches against Stearns Wharf. Then the storm developed into a full-fledged tornado - a Twister. This cyclone, the only one in the history of Santa Barbara, headed for shore, wrecking a Chinese junk in route. It crossed West Beach at the foot of Bath Street, carrying tons of seawater in its whirling vortex… fences and light buildings were removed like feathers...North of Carrillo Street the tornado petered out. The destructive funnel tip lifted and its lethal force dissipated skyward. The destruction was confined to the west of State Street along a very narrow path, as is typical of cyclones, but that path had started out at sea, and wrecked or sank almost every small craft moored in the lee of Stearns Wharf. Santa Barbara has never had a real cyclone since” (source).

Last September’s tsunami advisory for Santa Barbara and the Central Coast, caused by a magnitude 8.0+ temblor near Samoa, has a similar dichotomy. While the recent event only resulted in minor wave fluctuations of less than one foot locally, the largest California tsunami in the Santa Barbara Coast region supposedly occurred on December 21, 1812, following an earthquake that devastated Santa Barbara. According to later reports, the tsunami generated a wave up to 50 feet high which swept inland up to 1 mile. However, “No corroboration for those accounts has been found in the contemporary historical record; there is no mention of any effects upon the ocean from the well-documented earthquakes of 1812-1813, other than a single statement that ‘the sea was agitated’ at San Buenaventura. The latter-day accounts are shown to be variously erroneous, distorted or exaggerated, at best” (projects.crustal.ucsb.edu).

One last note on our local weather, also in relation to Goleta: “The city's geography at the feet of the Santa Ynez Mountains has made it subject to sudden, extremely hot winds locally called 'sundowners,' similar to the more famous Santa Ana winds in the Los Angeles and San Diego regions. They are caused by high pressure drawing dry air from the inland side of the mountains, whereupon they can become superheated as they rush down the city's side. On June 17, 1859, a sundowner wind rushed through Goleta and rapidly raised the temperature to 133 degrees Fahrenheit (approximately 56 degrees Celsius) in a matter of minutes. People were forced to take shelter immediately; when they emerged they saw that most animals and plants had been killed. It was the highest temperature recorded in the United States until 1913” (Wikipedia article on the City of Goleta) when Death Valley recorded the current record temperature of 134° F (57° C).

While Santa Barbara residents may remain complacent about the possible recurrence/occurrence of a major tornado or tsunami, they take their sundowners very seriously. The gale-force hot and dry winds of a sundowner can make firefighting impossible, as was the tragic case in the 1990 Painted Cave Fire and the recent Jesusita Fire. As previously stated, it doesn’t pay to be complacent about Santa Barbara weather.

In an article titled  “Nobel-Winning Panel’s Glacier Warning is Criticized as Exaggerated” in the January 18 edition of the New York Times, Professor  Bodo Bookhagen was quoted as stating “The Himalayan glaciers will not disappear by 2030 — that is an overstatement...(but) it is very clear that there is glacier retreat and that it (may have) devastating impacts.” Professor Bookhagen expands his views below.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) stated in its last report that it was “very likely” that the Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2030 if current warming trends continue. This statement has caused much controversy, with several publications agreeing or disagreeing in the recent months. Among climate and geomorphology scientists, however, there is little dispute: Glaciers in the Himalayas are at peril, but not all will disappear by 2030. A recent article in the New York Times highlights the sensitivity of this statement and the general political implications.

The article touches upon several important points, but it doesn’t elaborate on the scientific background. While the glacial response to climate is a complex phenomenon that is not yet fully understood, there are two main reasons (among others) why the IPCC statement is incorrect: First, the IPCC assessment is mostly based on a few detailed studies of Himalayan glaciers. These index glaciers are not necessarily representative of all Himalayan glaciers. The Himalaya Range spans almost 2000 km in an East-West direction and contains a wide range of characteristic climatic compartments. The largest glaciers in the Himalayas are in the western regions (northern Pakistan and India); they are fed by winter precipitation and exhibit a different characteristic than glaciers in the central (i.e., within the country of Nepal) and eastern Himalayas (Bhutan). In the latter regions, the glacier’s moisture budget is controlled through monsoon precipitation during the summer. These generally smaller glaciers are more sensitive and may respond stronger to moisture and temperate changes in a global-warming scenario. In addition, the index glaciers may be influenced by local climatic factors (e.g., orographic barriers) and, thus, may not be representative of the overall signal.

Secondly, the assessment is primarily based on measurement of the glacial-front retreat rate. The easiest and most straight-forward way of measuring glacial changes is to look at the glacial tongue and its changes through time. However, there is much more to a glacier’s health than frontal retreat—the key factor is the glacier’s mass balance, which is much more difficult to monitor and includes height and width as well as ice-property changes. New remote-sensing methodology used in our research group may help to shed light on some of the mass-balance questions.

During the recent geologic past and on millennial timescales, glacial waxing and waning correlates with changes in solar radiation due to orbital changes. During the early and mid Holocene, about 10 to 5 thousand years ago, Himalayan glaciers were much larger in extent. Since then, the glaciers have been retreating several kilometers in length. Arguably, this retreat may have accelerated during the past few decades in some regions, but in other regions, such as the western Himalayas, some glaciers have been reported to be advancing. Remnants of the former, larger glaciers can be observed in the western and central Himalaya where our research group is currently dating glacial extents. We attempt to link past climatic conditions with glacial conditions in order to understand glacial dynamics.

During the present day, there exists a large climatic gradient along the Himalaya that results in distinctive climatic compartments—Western catchments encompassing the Indus and Sutlej catchments in northern Pakistan and India, as well as in southwestern China, have large snow- and glacial melt contributions. In these areas, more than 50% of the annual river discharge is derived from solid precipitation and glacial melting. A decrease in glacial extent will decrease the amount of water for irrigation, hydropower generation, and downstream agriculture. The central and eastern Himalayas have a lower snow- and ice-melt contribution to annual discharge. However, during the pre-monsoon season from ~March to late May, discharge derived from melting snowfields and glaciers is important and significant. A decrease in glacial and snow cover will reduce the amount of water stored, and that has crucial consequences for more than 1 billion people throughout South Asia.

Editor’s note: Assistant Professor Bodo Bookhagen received his PhD (summa cum laude) in Geology from Potsdam University, Germany in 2005 and joined the UCSB Department of Geography in 2008. His research interests include understanding Quaternary climate change, geomorphic processes, landscape evolution, and tectonic processes through integrated studies involving cosmogenic radionuclide dating, recent and past climatic records, remote sensing, numerical modeling, and field observations.