Limestone Suiseki
Nosing out of the terra rossa soil, a limestone boulder with lichen and unusual weathering…
tuart dieback
A picture from our excursion to a property at the edge of Lake Clifton. This tree stump shows the shallow root system of the Tuart. I’m not sure whether this one fell over or was ‘pushed’ but at the same time tuarts in Yalgorup have suffered severe decline.
“The Yalgorup region represents the largest unfragmented area of tuart woodland in WA and looking at historical satellite images we can tell that the severe decline started in the early 1990s in Yalgorup, but that decline is now escalating rapidly and is spreading to other areas,’’ Mr Barber said.
Paul Barber from the Tuart Health Research Group (2007) http://www.sciencewa.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1650&Itemid=587
Phytophthora multivora has now been identified as a major factor in tuart dieback. However it seems that tree decline is a complex combination of other potential factors such as weeds, grazing, climate change, increased salinity in groundwater and insect attack.
plastic complexity
Thrown casually over discarded brush, this knot of bailer twine was on land where every skerrick of vegetation had been cleared for grazing — right down to the fenceline on Lake Clifton.
Conservation Council of WA: Bellwethers of Climate Change
From http://www.biodiversity2010.org.au/about/grant-recipients-round-3/
The White-striped Bat (Tadarida australis) is one of the largest insectivorous (microbats) in Australia. It is a fast flyer and tracks the open space above the tree canopy. Its speed gives it a wide foraging range and as a result it is one of the few bats routinely encountered over urban areas. Unlike most other microbats, the White-striped Bat cannot hibernate and so may be encountered foraging at relatively low temperatures. It also uses its fast energetic flight to migrate northwards across the arid zone during the winter months. Unlike other microbats part of the White-striped Bats echolocation call is audible to most people once they’ve been tuned in.
The White-striped Bat is being groomed as a climate change indicator species for both the ClimateWatch Program and the Conservation Council of Western Australia’s Citizen Science Program. The White-striped Bat is easy to detect (by listening for it) and its behaviour, distribution, migratory timing and population size are all potential indicators of climate change. Can the White-striped Bat adapt and if so how and where?
The ‘bat-listening’ project will be launched along with the 24 other Western Australian Climatewatch indicators at the opening of Conservation Week on 23 October. The launch will be preceded by a seminar ‘Bellwethers of Climate Change’ that will demonstrate the different responses of WA plants and animals to current climate change, including seabirds, bats and native plants. If volunteer bat listeners could do at least one observation period in that period, we can get a spring snap-shot of where the bats are distributed.
Presumably further information will be posted soon here http://www.conservationwa.asn.au/
Mass flowering brings a ray of hope for the Yalgorup…
As reported in Science WA news:
For the first time in 15 years, sections of the tuart woodland within the national park, just south of Mandurah, have produced prolific amounts of buds and flowers which will eventually bear fruit in time for the Centre’s 2011 seed collection program.
An exciting mass flowering raises serious questions about forest health / Image: Istockphoto
While the flowering has received a jubilant welcome from the Centre and its team of volunteer seed collectors, senior research fellow Dr Katinka Ruthrof said it has also prompted questions about the overall health of the forest.“We know from past research that tuarts in the Yalgorup region have been in decline for quite some time so to find an area with some indication of life is a very unexpected surprise,” she says.
“It is difficult to tell if this is a sign that the forest is slowly repairing itself or whether these trees are producing flowers as a final attempt at reproduction.
“Those trees that are flowering are definitely healthier than those that are not but as long as there are still trees in the area that are dying, the population is by no means past its decline phase…”
For news about seed collection by Ruthrof’s team see http://www.sciencewa.net.au/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=3103:mass-flowering-brings-a-ray-of-hope-for-the-yalgorup&catid=192:News&Itemid=200073
old corrugated iron near Lake Clifton
This iron was part of a fence to stop rabbits (I think) around a Lake Clifton property. Different sheets had different vestiges of blue paint leading me to think long linear lakes and transverse dunes.
Kate Abon at PICA
Critical Writing Residency
Kate Abon6 July – 6 September 2010
Clock Tower StudioA phenomenological experience of landscape
Kate Abon is a Perth based artist and arts writer who is interested in the way ontological paradigm shifts change the way we interact with the world. During the twentieth-century, the western philosophical treatment of perception was no longer dominated by vision. Knowledge gained from subjective sensorial experience was shown to be as valuable as that gained primarily from sight. The site of perception became located in the body as a whole, not just the mind, and interconnection suggested that the boundaries of the body are porous and ambiguous. This shift is paralleled in the emergence of new types of artworks and art processes; environmental art, land art, body art, sound art, installation art and participatory art all recognise the importance of the expanded sensorial body in making and experiencing art.
Currently, Kate is researching Western Australian artists who are primarily concerned with representing their relationship with/in the land. She is exploring how the broadening of sensorial experience may be influencing our world view to allow for the consideration of land in its own terms, rather than from an anthropocentric position. She plans to use her residency at PICA to identify and interview local artists whose practices reveal a significant interest with the phenomenological experience of the landscape, either in the process of creating art or in the presentation of artworks.
via PICA.
Bruno Latour: “May Nature Be Recomposed? A Few Questions of Cosmopolitics”
The Neal Wheeler Watson Lecture 2010, given by Professor Bruno Latour: “May Nature Be Recomposed? A Few Questions of Cosmopolitics”. The Lecture is given every spring at the Nobel Museum by an international scholar of excellence.
Location: Nobel Museum, Svenska Akademiens Börssal, May 11 2010.
Your comments please: long, hard to decipher and convoluted; but what do you think?
The Pied Oystercatcher, Haematopus longirostris
the mister potatohead of the bird world
peep a peep
peep a peep
peep a peep
peep a peep
peep a peep
peep a peep
come to world listening day event
check the event calendar on the side — and come on Sunday 18 July at 12:50 pm for about a half an hour walk from the Round House in Fremantle.
World Listening at the Round House Sunday 18 July
| July 18, 2010 | ||
| 12:50 pm | to | 1:45 pm |
You are invited to participate in the first World Listening Day, which happens on Sunday, July 18, 2010. World Listening Day celebrates the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology.
Come for a sound walk starting at the cannon at 1pm and walking down High Street for as long as you like… probably finishing around 13:30ish. Our mission is to listen (and record if you so feel inclined)!
Where: At the signal cannon at the back of the Round House (facing the sea) in Fremantle
When: Sunday 18 July BE AT THE CANNON (the time gun) NO LATER THAN 12:50 as the cannon goes off at 13:00 sharp
July 18 was chosen as the date for World Listening Day because it is the birthday of the Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. Schafer is one of the founders of the Acoustic Ecology movement. The World Soundscape Project, which he directed, is an important organization which has inspired a lot of activity in this field, and his book Soundscape: The Tuning of the World helped to define many of the terms and background behind the acoustic ecology movement.
I saw a wisp of snipe
I saw a wisp of snipe
or at least a wisp of waders this morning.
Lake Clifton was completely still with sharp flocks of white flying in fast lines across the surface.
Two swans and reflections.
Bloody noisy wattle birds.
for birders: Koos Dijksterhuis film about sanderlings on the beach of Schiermonnikoog
Created by Benny Klazenga, Jeroen Reneerkens, Koos Dijksterhuis
The sound track is a bit daggy but the human/nonhuman interface was well done.
anybody in Scotland 7-10 May?
This workshop is about to be canceled due to lack of interest — what a shame as I really wanted to go and will be in Scotland at the time.
It runs from the evening of the 7th to the morning of the 10th May at a place called Kindrogan (north of Perth, Scotland).
See the full details in the document here: http://www.perditaphillips.com/images/stories/about/WildlifeSoundRecording.doc
Mythogeography (the book)
From Phil Smith:
The book takes the form of a documentary-fictional collection of the internal documents, diary fragments, letters, emails, narratives, notebooks and handbooks of a loose coalition of performers, ‘alternative’ walkers, artists and lay geographers. All Illustrated in full colour by Tony Weaver, who designed the Wrights & Sites’ Mis-Guide books.
The fragmentary and slippery format recognises the disparate, loosely interwoven and rapidly evolving uses of walking today: as performance, as exploration, as urban resistance, as activism, as an ambulatory practice of geography, as meditation, as post-tourism, as dissident mapping, as subversion of and rejoicing in the everyday. ‘Mythogeography’ celebrates that interweaving, its contradictions and complementarities, and is an attempt at a handbook for those who want to be part of it.
http://www.triarchypress.com/pages/Mythogeography_Guide_to_Walking_Sideways.htm
And there’s a website too, which pushes it all a little bit further and that’s here – www.mythogeography.com
Lake Clifton Festival
| April 18, 2010 | ||
| 10:00 am | to | 4:00 pm |
Lake Clifton Festival
Sunday 18 April
from 10 am
In the grounds of Cape Bouvard Wines – via Lakeside Parkway or Clifton Downs Road.
Bring the family, bring the picnic basket, buy a bottle of vino/lunch and enjoy the music, art, walks and surrounds…
April 18 – Lake Clifton Festival
A message from Mandurah:
Let’s get passionate about
a silent, patient, unique
and quite extraordinarily beautiful space in Mandurah
that was recently recognised by one of the world’s foremost landscape writers as the most spectacular place he has ever visited.
About the fact that one of its natural features* created the very first oxygen molecules on earth – without which you and I would not be here today.
About its aboriginal mythology – created by the female waughal whilst her male counterpart created the Swan River.
About its threatened ecology* – recently listed as ‘critically endangered’ by the Federal Minister for the Environment – a wake-up call if ever there was one.
Join
artists, environmental groups, colleagues, musicians and local residents
and get passionate about
Lake Clifton
at the
Lake Clifton Festival
Sunday 18 April
from 10 am
In the grounds of Cape Bouvard Wines – via Lakeside Parkway or Clifton Downs Road.
Bring the family, bring the picnic basket, buy a bottle of vino/lunch and enjoy the music, art, walks and surrounds…
*thrombolites – very rare and now endangered
Please distribute this notice to your networks – thank you
Jane Tillson, Arts & Cultural Development Officer, City of Mandurah – 9550 3842
Download flyer Lake Clifton Flyer
the possibility that half our rainfall will go
Released yesterday by the Minister for Climate Change and Water, the Hon. Penny Wong, the report forecast reductions in runoff in South West Western Australia up to 49% over the next 20 years.
Lake Richmond microbialites
We disturbed a spoonbill roosting on the thrombolites. Musk duck calls out his territory in the water nearby.
These were quite squishy to the touch and birds had been pooing on them.
Close up of one of the lithified stones. I think this has been turned over when they dug the drain. It shows a non stratified texture. The brown fibres are fresh material dried on it from the last time the lake level was high. These whitish rocks are higher up the shore.
pelican day
On Monday (8 February) I visited Lake Richmond, Lake Walyungup and Lake Clifton. At each site I saw pelicans in the sky.
Mapping Data: Performing Landscape symposia
Wish I had been there…
http://blog.humlab.umu.se/?p=1356
multidisciplinary seminar to take place in HUMlab on December 16th. 1-5pm.
16 December 2009, 1 – 5pm,
HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden
The seminar explored questions such as: How does GPS affect our understanding of landscape? What are the cultural implications of GPS and GIS for the audience and for the mapmaker? How do we annotate and story tell? How can geographical data be explored, compared, analysed and animated over time?
Speakers:
- Paul Arthur, HUMlab Research Fellow. Virtual Perth, Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative.
- Jen Southern, Artist, University of Lancaster, UK. — Jen Southern (UK), Jen Hamilton and Chris St Amand (Canada) had done Running Stitch artwork for Umea as part of the Open Source Embroidery exhibition at BildMuseet
- Per Sandström, SLU, Forest Resource Management. Fredrik Palm, QVIZ, HUMlab, Umeå University (uses GPS to track reindeer movement in Sweden)
Southern, Hamilton & St Amand (2009) Running Stitch, Umea (HUMlab detail).
This seminar was supported by HUMlab in partnership with BildMuseet at Umeå University.
Lake Clifton thrombolites declared a critically endangered community
Well are they dead or are they alive? There have certainly been considerable changes in the microbial communities in the thrombolites in the last 10 years. Yesterday the Lake Clifton thrombolites were listed as critically endangered under the Federal EPBC Act under the following criteria
- Criterion 2 as critically endangered because its geographic distribution is very restricted and the nature of its distribution makes it likely that the action of a threatening process could cause it to be lost in the immediate future;
- Criterion 3 as critically endangered because the loss or decline of functionally important species is very severe;
- Criterion 4 as critically endangered because the reduction in integrity of critical ecological processes is very severe; and
- Criterion 5 as endangered because the rate of continuing detrimental change is severe and is projected to continue in the immediate future.
“The Lake Clifton thrombolite community is subject to numerous threats, most of which originate outside the ecological community itself. Scientific research suggests that there has been significant environmental degradation at Lake Clifton since at least the early 1990s (Moore, 1990; WA CALM, 2004a). This is despite the Peel-Yalgorup System being recognised as a wetland of international importance, and Lake Clifton being situated within the Yalgorup National Park (Moore, 1990).
…the thrombolite community occupies much of the eastern edge of Lake Clifton, which in turn forms the eastern boundary of the Yalgorup National Park. This means that the thrombolites are adjoined by private rural and rural-residential land holdings, which contributes significantly to the level of threat they face (Moore, 1990). The vegetation buffer zone between these properties and the foreshore of Lake Clifton is considered inadequate (Davies and Lane, 1996). The greatest current threat to the ongoing growth and survival of the Lake Clifton thrombolite community appears to be increased salinity due to increased groundwater extraction and altered groundwater flows, followed by increased nutrient levels coming from adjacent agricultural and rural-residential properties. If Lake Clifton becomes permanently hypersaline, it is likely that the patterns of thrombolite growth, faunal diversity and waterbird useage will also be affected. It is possible that the international scientific significance of the Lake will also be lost as a direct result (Knott et al., 2003). Current studies suggest that the change to a permanent state of hypersalinity may have already occurred (Alexander and John, 2008a).
Pollution, changes to surrounding vegetation, sedimentation and the introduction of fauna not native to the area also negatively impact on the ecological community (WA CALM, 2004a). People visiting Lake Clifton also directly impact by crushing or trampling the thrombolite structures, which are very fragile. Finally, possible impacts of climate change must also be considered.”
