new books in the Information Center

Off to AGU?  Or the slopes?  Pick up something to read on the way:

Heads Up! Early Warning Systems for Climate-, Water- and Weather-Related Hazards
by Michael Glantz, 2009
One of three CCB books being distributed this week at the COP-15 summit, Mickey’s new book from the United Nations reviews early warning systems in operation today and explores a range of natural hazards such as hurricanes and droughts.  This practical handbook outlines the role early warning systems play in disaster avoidance and reduction.

Stable Isotopes in Ecology and Environmental Sciences
by Robert Michener and Kate Lajtha, 2007
This book highlights new and emerging uses of stable isotope analysis in a variety of ecological disciplines.  Uses include tracing whole ecosystem element cycling, processes of soil organic matter formation, the movement of water in watersheds, the effects of pollution in both terrestrial and aquatic environments, extreme systems such as hydrothermal vents, and migrating organisms.  In each case, the book explains the background to the methodology, looks at underlying principles and assumptions, and outlines potential limitations and pitfalls.

Diatoms of North America: The Freshwater Floras of Prince Patrick, Ellef Ringnes and Northern Ellesmere Islands from the Canadian Arctic Archipelago
by Dermot Antoniades, et al., 2008
This comprehensive book covers the climate and limnology of study areas; methods; and diatom flora including taxonomy, occurrences, ecology, and descriptions.

Two Planks and a Passion: The Dramatic History of Skiing
by Roland Huntford, 2008
The ski is older than the wheel.  Huntford’s history of the ski begins 20,000 years ago in the last ice age, and draws on original Old Norse and Russian sources as well as Greek, Roman, Arabic, and Chinese texts.  It traces the evolution of skiing through social and political contexts (much more fun than it sounds) and notes where it changed the course of history in exploration, war, and peace.

Earth more sensitive to carbon dioxide than previously thought

A top Science Daily story today reviews a study by University of Bristol researchers, published in Nature Geoscience, showing that the earth is 30-50 percent more sensitive to atmospheric carbon dioxide than previously thought. The authors demonstrate that the increased temperatures indicated by their reconstructions can be explained if factors that vary over long timescales, such as land-ice and vegetation, are included in models.

Happy anniversary, quad sheets

The USGS today celebrated its 125th Anniversary for Topographic Mapping in the United States. As part of the celebration, USGS announced a new series of digital topographic maps, US TOPO, that will be produced on a 3-year cycle for the conterminous United States. See the press release for more information.

The USGS also released a new National Map viewer for access to its data layers and US TOPO products. Circular 1341, History of the Topographic Branch (Division), will satisfy those who wish for a detailed review of what remains the USGS' chief claim to fame in the public mind.

Extreme Ice Survey

The most wide-ranging glacier study ever conducted using ground-based, real-time photography documents the rapid changes now occurring on the Earth's glacial ice. Led by photographer Jim Balog, the EIS team has installed 27 time-lapse cameras at 15 sites in Greenland, Iceland, Alaska, and the Rocky Mountains. EIS supplements this ongoing record with annual repeat photography in Iceland, the Alps, and Bolivia.

Quick introductions to this influential confluence of art and science can be found in the Extreme Ice Survey in Google Earth or Jim Balog's TED talk.

Alpine lakes show effects of airborne nitrogen - Green Lakes in Science

Scientists looking at the impact of airborne nitrogen released from fossil fuels and fertilizers on alpine and subalpine lakes in Colorado, Sweden, and Norway have a paper in the Nov. 6 issue of Science.  They found the effects of airborne nitrogen to be much greater than previously recognized.

Read the paper in Science, or view a press release from NSF that includes a photo of Green Lake 4 on Niwot Ridge.

New books in the Information Center

Ecology
by Michael L. Cain, William D. Bowman, and Sally D. Hacker, 2008
  The dynamic, interdisciplinary nature of ecology, as well as its wealth of concepts, can make the subject difficult to grasp.  This college-level text by Bill Bowman and colleagues balances subject matter emphasis, clearly presented concepts, and examples.  The book reminds students of connections among levels of the ecological hierarchy and uses evolution as a unifying theme.  Rumor has it that a local student raved, “the only ecology book that doesn’t suck!”

Antarctica: Secrets of the southern continent
by David McGonigal et al., 2008
  McGonigal, a travel writer who has made more than 100 trips to polar regions, coordinated a team of writers and scientists to produce this large-format, sumptuously illustrated volume on Antarctic geography, ecology, wildlife, science, and exploration.  An entry details the International Polar Year 2007-2008.

Communicating science: A primer for working with media
by Holly Menninger and Robert Gropp, 2008
  This slim guide is the best (only?) book targeted at improving the way that scientists approach the media.  This should be required reading for anyone talking to the public—especially those who feel that research results speak for themselves.

Compositional data analysis in the geosciences: From theory to practice
edited by A. Buccianti, et al., 2006
  Statistics is expected to give sense to our perception of the natural scale of data, and this is made possible for compositional data using logratios. This book outlines the logratio approach, building on the idea of the “natural geometry” of the sample space.

Climate change impacts for the conterminous USA: An integrated assessment
edited by Norman Rosenberg and James Edmonds, 2005
  A series of papers analyze current and future climate change impacts on agriculture, water resources, ecosystems, irrigation, and land use in the United States and the economic implications of these impacts using an integrated assessment methodology.

Welcome to my world

"Never have so many people generated so much digital data or been able to lose so much of it so quickly." Wall Street Journal story on the data deluge facing scientists.