Orrin Pilkey ’57 University of California Press, 2011
It may appear to be a scholarly approach to beaches, but once you wade in to this book, you will find an entertaining and informative read. With a light touch, Pilkey and his co-authors manage to describe some heavy concepts like erosion, tsunamis, and human impact. Their goal, they say in the introduction, is to provide “a global perspective in regard to beaches, how they form, how … » More …
Ammonia based fertilizer, which provides nitrogen, can offer a great boost to even an otherwise not so healthy soil. But ammonia fertilizer, which depends on petroleum for its manufacture, is becoming very expensive. The consistent high yields of wheat on the Palouse depend on applying about 100 pounds of fertilizer per acre, with that fertilizer currently costing $50-80/ton. More significant, however, is not the cost, but the long-term effect of applying so much fertilizer.
Soils on the Palouse before farming were generally neutral, with a pH of 7, says Rich Koenig. Since then, the pH of the soil has dropped in some cases as much … » More …
While rock hunting across Antarctica last winter, WSU geochemist Jeff Vervoort was captivated by how the landscape revealed dramatic stories of merging glaciers, tortured ice, wind-sculpted snow, and glacial debris. But where he saw a language of science, Kathleen Ryan, an assistant professor of Interior Design, saw a language of aesthetic elements and principles, of curved lines, shapes, rhythm, and movement. The result was their interdisciplinary, husband-wife exhibit in spring’s Academic Showcase: Visual Language of Ice and Rock on the Frozen Continent.
In 2008, the Valley View fire in the Dishman Hills outside of Spokane burned 13 homes and 1,200 acres. A number of homes survived because residents applied Firewise principles to protect their residences. In this video produced by the Spokane County Conservation District, some of those residents discuss the fire, how they prepared their homes, and what happened during the blaze.
You can follow the mercurial weather of the Pacific Northwest with a number of resources from Washington State University and other weather websites.
AgWeatherNet :: Access to raw weather data from the Washington State University weather network, along with decision aids. AWN includes 136 weather stations located mostly in the irrigated regions of eastern Washington State but the network has undergone significant expansion in Western Washington and in dry land regions of the state. The AWN network is administered and managed by the AgWeatherNet team located at the WSU Irrigated Agriculture Research and Extension Center in Prosser, WA but is programmatically … » More …
The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service has an interactive soil map that can help determine the soils for an area of 100,000 acres or less. Zoom into to your desired location and select the area to see what soils cover that land.
If you contribute your daily bodily wastes to a municipal waste treatment plant, you are more than likely directly benefiting Washington soils.
According to Puyallup soil scientist Craig Cogger, each person in Washington produces about 60 pounds of biosolids per year. “Biosolid” is a euphemism for human waste and other inputs once they have been treated at a wastewater treatment plant. For the past 15 years, Cogger has helped spread biosolids on wheat land in Douglas County and studied the effect.
That effect has surprised him.
“We have seen a remarkable increase in organic matter,” he says, “despite the fact that the amount of biosolids … » More …
There was a time, not so long ago, in our great Northwest when boundaries were not a great concern. When the first non-Indian settlers reached the Palouse and the Columbia Plateau, they could look to the distant horizon and see nothing but blue sky and virgin prairie and shrub-steppe, potential farmland as far as they could imagine. And as they learned to know the land, they reveled in what the college scientists told them, of seemingly endless topsoil, of windblown loess 200 feet deep. But even as that soil washed and blew away at an unsettling rate, they also learned to ignore the worries of … » More …
In the spring of 1792, George Vancouver praised “the delightful serenity
of the weather.” A few years later, William Clark complained of a dour
winter that was “cloudy, dark and disagreeable.” How right they both
were. Weather patterns
determined by mountains and ocean grant the Pacific Northwest a
temperate climate that also has a dark and unpredictable side. » More ...
Different as they seem, the soils of Eastern and Western Washington have
one thing in common. They come—either by water, wind, or ice—generally
from elsewhere. And what takes eons to form can be covered over or erode
away in a geologic heartbeat. » More ...
