Eco Roof - Courtesy Portlandonline.com

Would it be possible to convert thousands of acres of industrial rooftops in Portland into lush meadows without tearing the buildings down?   Dusty George thinks you can.  He’s the President of the European Federation of Green Roof Associations.   You’d still see warehouses through your windshield as you drive through industrial areas.  But birds flying over would get an entirely different view and an visible invitation to drop on by.

Until now, Portland’s been promoting green roofs as a way to stop so much rain from running off and overflowing the city’s sewers.  We reported recently that green roofs can catch and hold as much as half of the water that falls on them.

But now there’s a new push.  Put in green roofs for a second benefit: to provide habitat for wildlife like nighthawks, songbirds or rapidly disappearing streaked horn larks.

You can learn more about this approach to green roofs when Dusty George comes in from London to give two presentations.   The public is invited to hear him on Tuesday, March 30, at 7pm at the Oregon Zoo’s Wildlife Conservation Lecture Series.  The cost is $10 ($8 for Zoo and Audubon members.)

They city’s inviting practitioners and green building professionals to a separate free event on Wednesday, March 31 at noon at the Portland Building at 1120 SW 5th Ave. in the 2nd Floor Auditorium.  No advance registration is required.

Ancient Limber Pine Courtesy Gary Dielman

We received an interesting footnote a few days ago to our recent story on the ancient limber pine that just might be the oldest living thing in Oregon.   Gary Dielman of Baker City tells us it might not just be the oldest tree, it appears to be the third largest limber pine in the world.

To come to that conclusion, the tree is given points.

Experts who measured this tree gave it 292 points.   (254 points for 254 inches circumference, 31 points for its height of 30.6 feet and 27 points for its average crown spread of 27 feet.)

Only two limber pines have more points.  Colorado’s largest limber pine has just three more points: 295.

Another in Utah is the world champion with 359 points.

We knew Dielman’s Monarch, as it’s come to be called, was an impressive tree.  Now it’s enshrined in the record books as the Champion Limber Pine in Oregon - and third largest in the world.

(The tree clings to an incredibly steep slope on the side of Cusick Mountain in the Eagle Cap Wilderness,)

View Larger Map

Earthrise Dec. 24, 1968 Courtesy NASA

If you’re old enough, you remember Christmas Eve, 1968 for an image that put the entire planet in its place. Of course, most folks saw it in black and white on their TVs.  The color version returned with the astronauts of Apollo 8 and became an iconic photo of the 20th century.

The world had never seen itself this way before.

NASA has updated the Big Blue Marble now by stitching together multiple images of our Earth into the most detailed image of the planet ever produced.

Is there an Oregon connection that warrants mentioning it here?  Nope.  In fact, we’re obscured under clouds. (Gee, what a surprise.)

It’s just plain impressive.

Click on the photo to see it in full size.

Courtesy NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

A sign hung by the rogue trail builders shows their premeditation. It encourages bikers to carry bikes out so they don't leave tracks and their trail remains undetected. Photo courtesy Portland Parks Bureau

Sometimes you get more than you bargain for.

After work on Friday I got the call; a mile-long rogue bicycle trail had been found in Forest Park and the city planned to move quickly on it.  I wasn’t sure if they’d block it, obscure it or fix it but I knew I needed video of the trail before its appearance changed.   It would simply be one element in covering the ongoing debate over how to increase bike opportunities in the park for a larger story we’re working on about the history and current status of Forest Park for Oregon Field Guide.

Friday night is too late to arrange a photographer for the next morning and I feared the city might respond over the weekend changing how the trail looked.   (Little did I know that the damage is so extensive they’d never have been able to make much of a difference in a day or two.)  So I grabbed a small video camera Saturday morning and started hiking down to the area at 8am.

At 9:45 I heard people up hill.  Maybe the Parks Bureau had sent people out quickly after all.  So I headed up hill but instead encountered two bicyclists moving a bunch of branches around.  The video shows what happened next:

Did the guys I met help create that rogue trail?  We don’t know.  Clearly, they knew about it and were using it.  They said they were trying to modify the trail to keep bikers out of the deepest mud.

Normally we wait to air our video until our story is done.   But this was making news.  We knew our video was relevant.  So OPB Radio included it in their story.

The damage is severe.  Whoever built it spent substantial time cutting down trees and damming a stream to create a crossing.   The city’s hoping to get the bike community to help them more thoroughly cover up the trail later this spring.  Then contract crews will be hired to replant next fall.  But it doesn’t end there.  The Parks Bureau says it’ll require 5 to 7 years of intensive management to keeps those plants going and keep the invasive species out of that freshly exposed soil.  Early projection on total cost:  $80,000 to $100,000.

This comes just as mountain bikers hope to convince the city to put more bike trails in Forest Park. A committee is in the process of figuring out how to make that happen.  The next meeting could be contentious as a result of this latest revelation.  The committee meets tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 25 at 5pm on the 2nd Floor, Room C, at Portland City Hall and is open to the public.

The Northwest Trails Alliance has taken a strong stand against the bikers who do this.  The Forest Park Conservancy has laid out the city’s rules clearly on where bikes are allowed in Forest park.

There’s an energetic discussion of this on the Bike Portland web page which you might want to join in.

Portland gets about 37 inches of rain each year.  That adds up to 86 billion gallons of water falling on our heads, grass, driveways, parking lots, roofs and trees.  The city’s big headache is that we’ve paved over so much of metropolitan Portland that most of that water is running down into the storm sewers.

So the city is encouraging green roofs and now even homeowners can get into the act.

But how much ran runs off the average house in a year in Portland?  You can do the calculation yourself.

The Square Feet of the roof  x  23  = gallons of runoff in a year.

Casey Cunningham at the city’s Bureau of Environmental Services elaborates:  ”In more detail: square footage times 3.083 (which is 37 inches of rain converted to feet) times 7.48 (the number of gallons in a cubic foot)”

A small home with a 1,000 square foot roof would see 23,000 gallons run off annually.   That’s more than a drop in the bucket.   Building with ecoroofs on them can capture and hold close to 50% of the water that falls on them.

The city’s not only encouraging businesses to install ecoroofs, it now wants to promote this on homes too. There’s an event called Ecoroof Portland 2010 coming up March 12 & 13 where you can learn all about it.   You can also learn how to apply for money from the city.  Incentives could offset up to $5 per square foot of your costs.  The event runs from 10am to 6pm at 101 NE Weidler in Portland.

Clark College in Vancouver is the only two-year surveying program in the metro area. Others are located in Salem and Roseburg and Olympia, WA.

http://www.clark.edu/academics/programs/surv/index.php

Oregon Tech in Klamath Falls is the only four-year surveying program in the Northwest. Others are located in Idaho Falls, ID and Elko, NV

http://www.oit.edu/programs/klamath-falls/geomatics/overview

And about the pay and job prospects?? Check this out:

5-Year Graduate Success Rate: (from OIT)

Employed: 95%,
Continuing Education: 2%

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the average salary for all geomatics professionals is $62,733 per year. This compares favorably with other engineering professions. For example, the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics reports that the average salary for all Civil Engineers is $61,256 per year.

• Recent graduates of OITs geomatics program have started at salaries ranging from $36,000 to over $70,000 per year.
• According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the architecture and engineering occupations group which includes surveyors, cartographers, photogrammetrists and surveying technicians is one of the top 10 occupational groups projected to have the fastest growth in employment between 2002 and 2012.

Eagle snatches murre. Courtesy Roy Lowe, US Fish & Wildlife

Bald eagles are back.  They’ve been removed from the endangered species list since June, 2007.  From just 417 nesting pairs in 1963 to  9,789 breeding pairs now, eagles have recovered well in the lower 48 states.

More eagles need more food.  Naturally, they eat other animals.  In Oregon, coastal eagles are having a profound impact on the ability of common murres to reproduce.  We explore that in-depth on Oregon Field Guide.

As for spotting eagles, winter can be a great time for raptor watching in some parts of Oregon.   (Plus, there are none of those pesky leaves on the trees so you can these remarkable animals more easily as they perch in trees.)

We’ve received two reminders of good raptor viewing this week.

This Saturday, Feb. 6, from 9am to 2pm, Portland Audubon is hosting a Raptor Road Trip at Sauvie Island.   Come see hawks, bald eagles and falcons who spend the winter there.

If you’d rather see up to 1,000 bald eagles in the same area, head to Klamath Falls.  The National Wildlife Federation listed it #1 on their Top 10 Places to See Bald Eagles.

Winter is peak season for bald eagles at the Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge keeps an up to date list of recent notable sightings of birds itemizing where, when and how many birds have been spotted.

Crabs don’t dive.  Do they?

Some very lucky crabs did - with a push from a crabber.

Their shells were too soft to make them marketable.  So they lived to see another day.  If they’re smart, they’ll avoid the next crab pot when they’re more mature and hardened up.  We caught this amusing angle with an underwater camera while shooting a story on a crab boat off the coast from Yachats, Oregon.

Pelicans in Netarts Bay Jan. 11, 2010 Photo Courtesy Bob Reed

Brown Pelicans should not be in Oregon right now.  But they remain on the coast by the hundreds, months after they should have migrated south.

Their late departure is threatening their lives.   They’re acting strangely. Biologist are getting reports of wild pelicans begging for food, showing not a lick of fear of humans.  What would you do if a bird approaches you?  Read below to see why biologists say the best thing is not to feed them.

Some people are finding dead pelicans washed up on the beach.

US Fish & WIldlife biologist Roy Lowe wrote me today saying he’s never seen anything like this in the 25 years he’s worked on Oregon’s coast and he believes this is a record number of pelicans to stay so late.  Update: As of March 1, 2010, 17 pelicans were still at Yaquina Bay, the first time pelicans have ever been recorded on the Oregon coast in March.

They should be in southern California and Mexico for winter breeding season.  But this is the third year in a row large numbers of pelicans have stayed well past normal in Oregon.   A year ago large flocks got caught in a two week ice and snow storm on the coast.  Some drowned while many suffered frost bite and hypothermia.   (Watch for a story on this on Oregon Field Guide coming up in March.)

Brown Pelicans are no longer endangered but they are federally protected.   The biologists want people who see any ailing birds to follow this advice, which I’ll copy straight in from their press release:

Pelicans at Netarts Bay December, 2009 Photo Courtesy Bob Reed

If you come upon a Brown Pelican that is still alive but appears to be
starving here is what to do:

*  If the bird is in the area of the coast from Astoria to Yachats
please call the Wildlife Center of the North Coast at (503) 338-3954.
Visit their Web site at www.coastwildlife.org/Home.html

*  If the bird is in the area of the coast from Florence south to Gold
Beach please call Free Flight Bird Rehabilitation at (541) 347-3882.
Visit their Web site is www.freeflightwildlife.org

*   If you find a dead Brown Pelican please leave it where you found
it.  Under the Migratory Bird Treaty Act it is illegal to possess any
part of a migratory bird, dead or alive. If you find a dead pelican
please contact the Coastal Observation and Seabird Survey Team at
(206) 221-6893 or visit their Web site at:
http://depts.washington.edu/coasst/

*  Finally, please DO NOT feed these birds.  This will only lead to
further habituation of these birds to handouts from humans. It is
important that these birds continue on their migratory route.

It’s a private garden that’s been open to the public by appointment for the last 32 years. PSU’s Environmental Science & Management program is going to take over the Garden’s seed bank of rare and endangered plant species, the first of its kind in the nation.

Oregon Field Guide featured the garden 2 years ago - and you can see the story repeat again tonight, Jan. 21 at 8:30pm.  But we didn’t learn the news of the garden’s imminent demise in time to update the show. The future is not so rosy as it was when we visited there before.

Rae Berry tended her garden until her death in 1976.  At that time passionate supporters recognized the value of her exquisite collections and preserved the land as a park.

Margaret Eickmann, the interim Director of the Garden, tells me they are looking for other public gardens which might make good new homes for the remarkable collection of plants.  Send her ideas she says!  Nominate a public garden to host their plants.  Naturally, she’d love to have a buyer come forward to save the garden but so far none has stepped forward.

You still have time to visit though.  The garden is located at 11505 SW Summerville Ave. in Portland.

But you must make a reservation.  Call 503-636-4112 extension 102.  Hours are restricted by staff availability.

The garden likely will remain open through the end of this summer.