Nopack Snowpack

'On a Whole Other Level’ - Rapid snow melt-off in American west stuns scientists.

Snow surveys taking place across the American west this week are offering a grim prognosis, after a historically warm winter and searing March temperatures left the critical snowpack at record-low levels across the region.

Experts warned that even as the heat begins to subside, the stunning pace of melt-off over the past month has left key basins in uncharted territory for the dry seasons ahead. Though there’s still potential for more snow in the forecast, experts said it will probably be too little too late.

“This year is on a whole other level,” said Dr Russ Schumacher, a Colorado State University climatologist, speaking about the intense heat that began rapidly melting the already sparse snowpack in March. “Seeing this year so far below any of the other years we have data for is very concerning.”

Acting as a water savings account of sorts, snowpacks are essential to water supply. Measurements taken across the west during the week of 1 April are viewed as important indicators of the peak amounts of water that might melt into reservoirs, rivers and streams and across thirsty landscapes through the summer.

During a critical survey in California’s Sierra Nevada on Wednesday, grass and mud could be seen through the thin white patchwork as state officials attempted to measure the meager snowpack.

“Normally we’d be standing right here,” Andy Reising, manager of California department of water resource’s snow surveys and water supply forecasting unit said, gesturing at chin height. The 5ft-tall tool typically thrust deep into the high berms on 1 April poked into the brown earth next to him. “There is actually no measurable snow.”

With zero depth and zero water content, this year’s annual April snow survey conducted at Phillips Station, was the second worst on record, beaten only by 2015 when officials “walked across a dry field”, Reising said.

It’s not just the amount of snow left on mountaintops that’s concerning experts, but the amount of moisture still frozen within them. “Snow water equivalent” (SWE), a measurement of what could melt off to supply natural and manmade systems, is exceptionally low.

California’s Sierra Nevada had just 4.9in of SWE, or 18% of average on Wednesday, according to the state’s department of water resources.

In the Colorado River headwaters, an important basin that supplies more than 40 million people across several states, along with 5.5m acres of agriculture, 30 tribal nations, and parts of Mexico, had just over 4in of SWE on Monday, or 24% of average. That’s less than half what was previously considered the record low.

Schumacher said the incoming storm could slow the early melting but won’t be enough to pull the basins back from the brink. Snow water equivalent measurements going into April were at levels typically seen in May or June, after months of melt-off, according to Schumacher.

The issue is extremely widespread. Data from a branch of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), which logs averages based on levels between 1991 and 2020, shows states across the south-west and intermountain west with eye-popping lows. The Great Basin had only 16% of average on Monday and the lower Colorado region, which includes most of Arizona and parts of Nevada, was at 10%. The Rio Grande, which covers parts of New Mexico, Texas and Colorado, was at 8%.

“This year has the potential of being way worse than any of the years we have analogues for in the past,” Schumacher said.

‘Nothing short of shocking’

Even with near-normal precipitation across most of the west, every major river basin across the region was grappling with snow drought when March began, according to federal analysts. Roughly 91% of stations reported below-median snow water equivalent, according to the last federal snow drought update compiled on 8 March. Water managers and climate experts had been hopeful for a March miracle – a strong cold storm that could set the region on the right track. Instead, a blistering heatwave unlike any recorded for this time of year baked the region and spurred a rapid melt-off.

“March is often a big month for snowstorms,” Schumacher said. “Instead of getting snow we would normally expect we got this unprecedented, way-off-the-scale warmth.”

More than 1,500 monthly high temperature records were broken in March and hundreds more tied. The event was “likely among the most statistically anomalous extreme heat events ever observed in the American south-west”, climate scientist Daniel Swain said in an analysis posted this week.

“Beyond the conspicuous ‘weirdness’ of it all,” Swain added, “the most consequential impact of our record-shattering March heat will likely be the decimation of the water year 2025-26 snowpack across nearly all of the American west.” [...]

In the Colorado River Basin, the situation could be even more dire. The two largest reservoirs on the Colorado River are Lake Mead and Lake Powell, which together account for about 90% of storage, are 25% and 33% full accordingly, as of 29 March, and there is little to fill them.

Already officials are in the process of relocating a floating marina on Lake Powell in anticipation of the quickly receding water levels, as experts warn the vital reservoir could drop to the lowest levels recorded since it was filled in the 1960s. If they fall far enough, the system would cease to function altogether. So-called “deadpool” – when water isn’t high enough to pass through the dams, generate hydroelectric power, and be distributed downriver – would be catastrophic.

The Colorado River has been overdrawn for more than a century but rising temperatures and lower precipitation are putting more pressure on the system that depended on by cities, farms, industries and wildlife across the west. The extreme conditions have added more urgency and greater tensions to fraught negotiations over who will bear the brunt of badly needed cuts. Seven states that have blown past two key deadlines are still locked in a stalemate over how the river’s essential resources will be managed through a hotter and drier future.

by Gabrielle Canon, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: Guardian Design/Nasa Worldview

[ed. See also: Western US states fail to negotiate crucial Colorado River deal: ‘Mother nature isn’t going to bail us out’ (Guardian).]

'Fragment Creation Event' - Starlink Satellite Breaks Apart

SpaceX’s Starlink division confirmed yesterday that it lost contact with a satellite on Sunday and is trying to locate space debris that might have been produced by… whatever happened there.

Starlink said there appeared to be “no new risk” to other space operations and did not use the word “explosion.” But it seems that something caused a Starlink broadband satellite to break apart into at least tens of pieces. LeoLabs, which operates a radar network that can track objects in low Earth orbit, said in an X post that it “detected a fragment creation event involving SpaceX Starlink 34343,” one of the 10,000 or so Starlink satellites in orbit.

“LeoLabs Global Radar Network immediately detected tens of objects in the vicinity of the satellite after the event, with a first pass over our radar site in the Azores, Portugal,” LeoLabs said. “Additional fragments may have been produced—analysis is ongoing.”

LeoLabs said the breakup was “likely caused by an internal energetic source rather than a collision with space debris or another object.” Because of “the low altitude of the event, fragments from this anomaly will likely de-orbit within a few weeks,” it said. [...]

LeoLabs said yesterday that the new event is similar to one from December 17, 2025, which also produced “tens of objects in the vicinity of the satellite” and appeared to be “caused by an internal energetic source” rather than a crash with another object. LeoLabs said it wants more information on the anomalies.

“These events illustrate the need for rapid characterization of anomalous events to enable clarity of the operating environment,” it said.

Starlink provided a few details shortly after the December 2025 incident, saying on December 18 that an “anomaly led to venting of the propulsion tank, a rapid decay in semi-major axis by about 4 km, and the release of a small number of trackable low relative velocity objects.” Starlink added that the satellite was “largely intact” but “tumbling,” and would reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and “fully demise” within weeks.

In December, Starlink seemed confident that it could prevent future anomalies. “Our engineers are rapidly working to [identify the] root cause and mitigate the source of the anomaly and are already in the process of deploying software to our vehicles that increases protections against this type of event,” Starlink said in the December 18 post.

We asked SpaceX today whether it has determined the cause of the December anomaly or the one on Sunday, and will update this article if we get a response.

by Jon Brodkin, Ars Technica |  Read more:

Image: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

Lost In Space

No one is happy with NASA’s new idea for private space stations (Ars Technica):

"Most elements of a major NASA event this week that laid out spaceflight plans for the coming decade were well received: a Moon base, a focus on less talk and more action, and working with industry to streamline regulations so increased innovation can propel the United States further into space.

However, one aspect of this event, named Ignition, has begun to run into serious turbulence. It involves NASA’s attempt to navigate a difficult issue with no clear solution: finding a commercial replacement for the aging International Space Station.

During the Ignition event on Tuesday, NASA leaders had blunt words for the future of commercial activity in low-Earth orbit. Essentially, they are not confident in the viability of a commercial marketplace for humans there, and the agency’s plan to work with private companies to develop independent space stations does not appear to be headed toward success. Plenty of people in the industry share these concerns, but NASA officials have not expressed them out loud before.

“We’re on a path that’s not leading us where we thought it would,” said Dana Weigel, manager of the International Space Station program for NASA.

NASA proposed a new solution that would bind the private companies more closely to NASA, requiring them not to build free-flying space stations but rather to work directly with the space agency on modules that would, at least initially, dock with the International Space Station. This change was not well-received."

***

[ed. See also: SpaceX offers details on orbital data center satellites (Space News):]

"At a March 21 event in Austin, Texas, Musk outlined an initiative by SpaceX, along with automaker Tesla and artificial intelligence company xAI — also run by Musk — to massively increase production of high-end computer chips needed for both terrestrial and space applications.

The Terafab project seeks to produce one terawatt of processors annually, which Musk said is 50 times the combined production rate of all manufacturers of chips used today in advanced applications such as AI.

Those processors, he said, are the “missing ingredient” in his plans to deploy a large constellation of satellites to serve as an orbital data center.

“We either build the Terafab or we don’t have the chips, and we need the chips, so we’re going to build the Terafab,” he said.

"SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission in late January for a constellation of up to one million satellites that would be used as an orbital data center for AI applications. The company provided few technical details about the constellation, including the size of the satellites, in that application."

Hawaii’s Small Farmers Begin Recovery After Catastrophic Flooding

Eddie Oroyan’s farm was thriving when the storms hit. He and his wife had started LewaTerra Farm last year on a gorgeous stretch of land on the north shore of Oahu. They were delivering vegetables to customers in the community, selling at farmer’s markets and to local restaurants.

Then, on the week of 10 March, a first kona low storm hit the island, bringing copious amounts of water, flooding their land and wiping out crops. Nearly all their papayas were gone. And the tomatoes didn’t survive. But the couple quickly began cleaning, replanting and tying down crops, confident that they would get back on their feet shortly.

“It was looking really positive. We were like, OK, we’re going to make it out of this,” Oroyan said.

But days later the Hawaiian Islands were hit with yet another storm – this one even more perilous. It inundated neighborhoods, leading to more than 200 rescues, washing houses off their foundations and leaving wide swaths of the land underwater.

Oroyan and his wife evacuated in chest-deep water. They returned to find an almost complete loss.

“The crops were completely covered and had already been underwater earlier that week. The disease was already setting in,” he said.

One week on, Hawaii is only just beginning to grapple with the aftermath of both storms, which saw as much as 50in of rain and caused some of the state’s worst flooding since 2004. The damage is immense – with officials estimating costs at $1bn, and farmers have been hit hard, particularly on Oahu. More than 300 farms have reported about $17.5m in damage as of this week, said Brian Miyamoto, the executive director of the Hawai‘i Farm Bureau.

“This is so widespread that the need is astronomical,” he said.

And with significant debris, damaged roads, and thick mud indoors and outside, cleanup will take time. [...]

Blake Briddell and Brit Yim, who for the last eight years have run an eight-acre farm on land that used to serve as a sugarcane plantation on the north shore, went through their nursery and storage sheds, elevating everything off the ground to protect their breadfruit, mango and citrus trees.

The storm came sooner than expected. The first front brought incessant rain, dropping about 20in in McKinnon’s area, which typically sees an average of 30in for the year. The water levels on Briddell’s farm were steadily rising, and the couple soon had to evacuate.

The heavy rains didn’t stay for long, but caused significant damage, including flooding fields and saturating the ground, and harvested crops were lost to power outages and damaged equipment.

Much of the land that Oroyan and his wife, Jessica Eirado Enes, tend had been left coated in a thick layer of mud thanks to the dense clay soil. Millions of years of erosion from the mountains produced that mineral-rich clay soil, which is good for planting, but that doesn’t soak up water well, Oroyan said, and swallows shoes and tractors.

The couple spent days cleaning up their land, trying to get things back in order and leaving soaked equipment out to dry. They got to work replanting crops that had tipped over, including eggplant and okra.

So did McKinnon and Briddell. Another kona storm was forecast, but was expected to be less severe than the previous ones. “It’s silly looking back, but we were talking about how it might be nice to get a little bit of rain to wash the mud off of everything. Like a little bit of rain would be welcome,” Briddell said.

Briddell woke up at 1.30am on the morning of 20 March to the see water surrounded his farm’s small living space, an alarming development given that it is located on the most elevated area of the property. The water was already shin-deep, meaning the road was too flooded for the couple to drive out, he said.

“We knew we were stuck at that point and it was just a matter of ‘OK, everything that we can get back up elevated, let’s do it’” Briddell said. “The water at that stage was raising about a foot every 20 minutes. I’ve never seen anything like it. You could literally see the water line climbing.”

Meanwhile, as the storm made landfall, Oroyan had been harvesting beets and lettuce in the rain, trying to get them out of the ground before it became too muddy to do so. As he prepared to go to bed, he saw that water was already overwhelming a nearby culvert and coming to the edge of a drainage ditch on the property.

He and his wife began to prepare once more. They gathered their things and moved valuable heavy equipment, a solar generator and a washing machine.

“Within 20 minutes of me saying we should start prepping it was at the foot of the living space,” Oroyan said. Twenty minutes later it was up to their knees, and they drove their vehicles to higher ground with water submerging the hoods of their cars. They made it to a neighbors after walking through chest-deep water.

Briddell and Yim put on wetsuits, and placed their dry clothes in a cooler. The couple knew their cats would not leave, and that they couldn’t swim out with them, so they left wet food on the rafters of their home where they knew they’d be safe. They swam a quarter of a mile to their kayak and met with a friend who offered them a vehicle to drive out in.

“The drive was scarier than the swim. The water ripping down the roads. You’re driving with the tailpipe pipes submerged for miles where you can’t let off the gas,” Briddell said.

by Dani Anguiano, The Guardian | Read more:
Images: Eddie Oroyan of LewaTerra Farm

[ed. Climate change. We lost the fight before ever getting started. Because it was a hoax. Because we needed to protect our corporations and our economy, 401Ks, consumptive standards of living. Because it was too complex and too far in the future. Because it was just too hard. See also: They’re Rich but Not Famous—and They’re Suddenly Everywhere.]

Fuzz: Wildlife Conflict in the Modern Era

Recently, I read Fuzz: When Natures Breaks the Law by Mary Roach. Like all of her books, it is a meandering journey that touches on a common theme. Although the subtitle makes it seem that the theme is nature crime, the theme is more about conflicts between bureaucracy, modernity and nature rather than crime itself. A more accurate but worse title would be Fuzz: The Weird Ways Humans Deal with Nature while Navigating Bureaucracy and the Impossibility of People Wanting to be around Wildlife without Ever Being Inconvenienced. Some examples Roach explores include the Indian government’s attempt to sterilize monkeys, how the city of Aspen deals with bears raiding trash cans, and the many failed attempts at getting rid of birds including the infamous Australian emu war.

Reading Fuzz was often frustrating because most of the problems share the same basic structure regardless of time or place. Humans disturb a local ecosystem through moving there or extracting resources. Animals then wander into human settlements in response to ecosystem change that has worsened their food supply, altered the predator-prey ratio, or made it easier to get caloric rich food. Humans react by engaging in one of two strategies. Strategy one is to kill everything, which is usually ineffective because it does not affect the population levels or results in extinction (at least in the region) which results in further ecosystem change. Strategy two is to feed the wild animals because that seems like the nice thing to do except that feeding them encourages the animals to keep going into the human settlements which makes the animals bolder which leads to more conflict and potentially leads to attacks. Once this has started, the animals become so used to relying on people for food that they cannot be integrated back into the wild. Sometimes people become so frustrated and angry that they go back to the first strategy of kill everything.

These problems can seem intractable. People have a hard time being convinced that killing everything doesn’t work and the people who don’t want to kill the animals have a hard time accepting that their help may makes things worse. They continue to feed the wild animals, resist methods that would discourage the animals (such as locking trashcans), and mainly advocate translocation (moving the animal to a different area) even though translocation rarely works. Whether because of blinding love or hate, people have a hard time handling wild animals wandering into their homes and cities.

Even though reading about these issues was frustrating, Fuzz left me feeling more inspired than dejected. There are examples of humans humanely and successfully addressing human-wildlife conflict and limiting the presence of introduced flora and fauna. They do so through careful study of local ecosystems, which includes the humans who live there and how they feel about wildlife. What was the most inspiring thing in the book was seeing how much the animal rights and environmental movements have changed how the public handles these wildlife issues. Before the 1970s, the kill everything approach was the norm. Now it is not.

Throughout these stories, Roach makes the case that the best way to deal with wildlife conflict is to find better ways to live with animals that isn’t killing them or making them reliant on humans. Sometimes the solution is simple and easy. After multiple chapters of ridiculous attempts to stop birds from eating crops, Roach argues that it’s better to do nothing or to hire a human to scare the birds off. Other times the solution is complicated. In New Zealand, there’s research being done on using genetic engineering to induce infertility among mice and other destructive, introduced species as a way to reduce the population without mass poisoning. The researchers are trying to limit unintended consequences but there will always be risk. The important question is whether the unknown risk of doing something is worth the known risk of doing nothing. I appreciate that there are people out there doing the often thankless work of trying to make humans and wildlife happy. Roach did an excellent job of showing the myriad of ways this plays out and, unlike other books I’ve read, Roach discusses these issues without claiming that now is the first time humans have tried caring about nature and ecological balance.

by Mia Milne, Solar Thoughts |  Read more:

Image: Fuzz

[ed. This issue has played out forever in my old hometown of Anchorage, Alaska (as you can imagine), and will probably never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction. It's a form of politics. What's the science say, and what are the options? How feasible are mitigative policies, and how much will they cost? Finally arriving at the most relevant question: what kind of city do you want to live in (that would perpetually kill its animal populations and modify its natural environment)?]

NASA's 'Lunar Viceroy' on Moon Base Plans

NASA's “Lunar Viceroy” talks about how NASA will build a Moon base (Ars Technica)

Image: Rendering of a Moon base that will be built over the next decade. Credit: NASA

[ed. In the next 10 years.]

Carving Up Big Bend

 

A massive border wall expansion is underway (Washington Post/Archive Today)

TERLINGUA, Texas — The Trump administration is building hundreds of miles of border wall through iconic national parks, public lands and ecologically sensitive wilderness, empowered by provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill that provided $46.5 billion in funding and a 2005 law that waived dozens of environmental rules for border security projects. [...]

The aggressive pace — three new miles of wall a week — has alarmed advocates and national parks staff who say the construction will destroy pristine country, threaten endangered species, and cut off access to sacred Indigenous and archaeological sites. And it has sparked an unusual degree of bipartisan pushback, with sheriffs, conservative county judges, environmentalists and Texas state lawmakers lobbying Trump officials to change course. [...]

The Department of Homeland Security has issued waivers under the 2005 REAL ID Act, allowing the department to disregard the wall’s impact on plants and animals normally protected by the Endangered Species Act. The project is exempted from the National Environmental Policy Act — a sweeping law that mandates an extensive review of a federal action’s potential impacts and public consultation that can take years...

Sorting through complicated legal and property ownership issues slowed down border wall construction in Texas during the first Trump administration. But the federal government is now skipping meetings with local officials and landowners and awarding contracts to out-of-state firms. Last month, the Army Corps of Engineers sent packets to Texas landowners along the wall’s path containing maps showing the land they planned to take. The proposed construction could include anything from ground sensors and infrared cameras to 30-foot steel bollards affixed with floodlights and gravel roads for Border Patrol vehicles — and often all of the above.

Big Bend National Park has emerged as a political flash point in the new expansion, with many landowners and conservationists describing a border wall as an unnecessary encroachment from big government seizing one of the last vestiges of unspoiled freedom and frontier.

by Arelis R. Hernández, Jake Spring, John Muyskens and Thomas Simonetti, Washington Post | Read more:
Images: YouTube/WaPo

[ed. Of all the national parks in the lower 48 Big Bend is the one I'd most like to visit. Beautiful and rugged, and not overly ruined by tourism (yet) or walls (yet). More great pictures in the article. If you've seen the movie Fandango (with Kevin Costner) you know the area. Then there's Marfa (a small nearby arts community) and Terlingua (ref: Jerry Jeff Walker's Viva Terlingua). And, a night sky that's been documented as the darkest in the country (floodlights will do wonders for that). I guess it's ok to just ignore every law on the books and outright take people's property against their will in this administration.]

Vertical Farming

via:
[ed. Impressive.]

***

"While most vertical farms are limited to lettuces, Plenty spent the past decade designing a patent-pending, modular growing system flexible enough to support a wide variety of crops – including strawberries. Growing on vertical towers enables uniform delivery of nutrients, superior airflow and more intense lighting, delivering increased yield with consistent quality.

Every element of the Plenty Richmond Farm–including temperature, light and humidity–is precisely controlled through proprietary software to create the perfect environment for the strawberry plants to thrive. The farm uses AI to analyze more than 10 million data points each day across its 12 grow rooms, adapting each grow room’s environment to the evolving needs of the plants – creating the perfect environment for Driscoll’s proprietary plants to thrive and optimizing the strawberries’ flavor, texture and size. Even pollination has been engineered by Plenty, using a patent-pending method that evenly distributes controlled airflow across the strawberry flowers for more efficient and effective pollination than using bees, supporting more uniform strawberry size and shape."  ~ Greater Richmond Partnership

Teshekpuk Lake

Arctic Alaska oil and gas lease sale draws record bidding, despite legal clouds (AK Beacon)

The first lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska since 2019 generated $163 million in high bids, but some bids were for protected land

***

A controversial oil and gas federal lease sale in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska generated a new bidding record, according to results released on Wednesday. It was the first auction held in that Arctic Alaska territory since 2019.

The lease sale produced $163 million in high bids, beating the $104 million mark set during the first competitive oil and gas lease sale in the Indiana-sized reserve, which was held in 1999 during the Clinton administration.

Eleven companies submitted bids for more than 1.3 million acres of the nearly 5.5 million acres offered in the auction.

Kevin Pendergast, Alaska state director for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, called the results “historic.”

“This is the strongest sale we have ever had in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska by nearly every measure. It makes clear that for the NPR-A, despite all the successes to date, the best days are still ahead,” Pendergast said at the conclusion of the bid opening, which lasted about two hours.

In statements issued after the bid reading, federal and state officials hailed the results. [...]

The lease sale was one of five mandated in the reserve over the next 10 years by the sweeping budget and tax bill called the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” That mandate calls for lease sales to be conducted under a Trump administration management plan that opened 82% of the reserve to oil development. Previously, the Obama administration held annual lease sales in the petroleum reserve, but that administration’s management plan protected about half of the land through the designation of “special areas” considered important to wildlife and to Native cultural practices.

Federal officials auctioned tracts of protected land

Much of the bidding in Wednesday’s sale was for territory that was previously off-limits to oil development under protections that date as far back as the Reagan administration. [ed. guess who helped write and fight for those protections.]

The inclusion of long-protected land in the sale, predominantly the area around ecologically sensitive Teshekpuk Lake, made the lease sale contentious. It is the subject of two lawsuits filed by Native and environmental groups.

Bids were accepted even for tracts within an area encircling Teshekpuk Lake, the North Slope’s largest lake, despite a federal court order issued Monday that reinstated development prohibitions there.

by Yareth Rosen, Alaska Beacon |  Read more:

Image: YouTube

[ed. Nice video, you should watch it. $163 million is not nothing, but it's not a lot. Prudhoe Bay - before there was any infrastructure or pipeline - garnered $900 million, and it was a much smaller area. When I was overseeing oil and gas leasing in the arctic in the 80s there was very little interest in NPR-A - except for Teshekpuk Lake, one of the most ecologically important areas on the North Slope (along with ANWR). We used to joke that if you wanted to find oil just look for the most environmentally sensitive area you could find in a lease sale and bid there. Not a joke anymore.]

Dick Griffith: Alaskan Adventurer Dies At 98

Roman Dial’s first encounter with Dick Griffith at the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic pretty much encapsulated the spirit of the man Dial called the “grandfather of modern Alaskan adventure.”

Griffith invited the 21-year-old Dial, who was traveling without a tent, to bunk with him while rain fell in Hope at the onset of the inaugural race. And then the white-haired Griffith proceeded to beat virtually the entire field of racers — most of whom were 30 years his junior — to the finish line in Homer.

Griffith, who died earlier this month at age 98, was a prodigious adventurer with a sharp wit who fostered a growing community of fellow explorers who shared his yearning for the Alaska outdoors.

Dial was one of the many acolytes who took Griffith’s outdoors ethos and applied it to his own adventures across the state.

“Someone once told me once that the outdoor adventure scene is like this big tapestry that we all add on to,” Dial said. “And where somebody else is sort of woven in something, we pick up and kind of riff on that. And he added a really big band to that tapestry, and then the rest of us are just sort of picking up where he left off.”

On that first meeting at the race in 1982, Dial and the other Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic competitors got a sense of Griffith’s humor as well. In a story that is now Alaska outdoors lore, Griffith pulled a surprise move at the race’s first river crossing, grabbing an inflatable vinyl raft out of his pack and leaving the field in his rear view.

“You young guys may be fast, but you eat too much and don’t know nothin’,” Dial recalls Griffith quipping as he pushed off.

“Old age and treachery beats youth and skill every time.”

In those years, Griffith may have been known for his old age as much as anything. But it didn’t take long for the 50-something racing against a much younger crowd to make a mark.

Kathy Sarns was a teenager when she first met Griffith in the early 1980s, and the topic of the Alaska Mountain Wilderness Classic came up.

“He says, ‘You want to do that race? I think a girl could do that race,’ ” Sarns recalls. “And I’m thinking, ‘Who is this old guy?’ And then he says, ‘If you want to do the race, give me a call. I’ll take you.’ ”

Sarns took up Griffith on the offer and in 1984, she and her friend Diane Catsam became the first women to complete the race.

Sarns said the adventures “fed his soul,” and were infectious for those who watched Griffith and joined him along the way.

“He motivated and inspired so many people by what he was doing,” Sarns said. “It’s like, well if he can do that, then I guess I could do this.”

By the time Dial and Sarns had met Griffith, he had already established a resume for exploring that was likely unmatched in the state.

In the late 1950s, Griffith walked 500 miles from Kaktovik to Anaktuvuk Pass, passing through the Brooks Range. Later he went from Kaktovik to Kotzebue in what is believed to be the first documented traverse of the range.

In total, Griffith logged over 10,000 miles in the Alaska and Canadian Arctic. He raced the 210-mile Iditaski multiple times.

Starting in his 60s, Griffith made annual trips north to tackle a 4,000-mile route from Unalakleet to Hudson Bay in northeastern Canada. At age 73, he completed the journey.

“The reason he did a lot of trips by himself is because nobody could keep up,” Dial said. [...]

John Lapkass was introduced to Griffith through Barney, a friend with whom Lapkass shared outdoor adventures.

Like many, Lapkass connected with Griffith’s wry sense of humor. Griffith would write “Stolen from Dick Griffith” on all of his gear, often accompanied by his address.

In Alaska, Griffith basically pioneered rafting as a form of getting deep into the Alaska backcountry.

Anchorage’s Luc Mehl has himself explored large swaths of the state in a packraft. An outdoors educator and author, Mehl met Griffith over the years at the barbecues he hosted leading up to the Alaska Wilderness Classic.

Although he didn’t embark on any adventures with Griffith, Mehl was amazed at how much accomplished well into his 80s.

“There are people in these sports that show the rest of us what’s possible,” Mehl said. “It would be dangerous if everybody just tried what Dick did. But there is huge value in inspiration. Just to know it’s a possibility is pretty damn special.” [...]

Many of those adventures were done mostly anonymously as a course of habit with friends, some only finding out after the fact what Griffith had accomplished.

“He had the heart of an explorer,” Clark said. “Dick’s exploring 40 years ago would have been with the pure motivation of finding out if he could get from here to there.”

by Chris Bieri, Anchorage Daily News | Read more:
Images: Bob Hallinen/Kathy Sarns
[ed. I didn't realize Dick had died, he was the kind of guy you'd never imagine succumbing to mortality. Walked alone across most of Alaska. Father of pack rafting. Never carried a gun or bear spray (it wasn't invented back then). A type of Alaskan I call TOBs (tough old bastards). I've known a few. My father-in-law was one (doctor, polar bear hunter, bush pilot - flew from Anchorage to Little Diomede Island in the Bering Straits each spring to visit friends); my former supervisor and eventual rehire during the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Lee Glenn (world class bear researcher, had four wisdom teeth chiseled out and removed without novocaine because he didn't like drugs); and others, like Dick Proenneke, and our former governor Jay Hammond. TOBs. They were what made Alaska - Alaska. I can just imagine what they'd think of todays influencers, hype artists, podcasters, and fake reality stars who need to document every mental fart for attention. Or folks like these: Oregon tourist couple files lawsuit over dogsled crash in Fairbanks (AK Beacon).]

UW Cherry Blossoms

[ed. Still a little early it looks like. See also: University of Washington cherry blossoms: Where to park, see webcams and more (Seattle Times); and UW Cherry Blossom webpage (UW).]

Strait of Hormuz

Satellite view of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway between Iran and Oman that links the Persian Gulf to the Arabian Sea, through which one-fifth of the world’s oil supply passes.

Image: Gallo Images/Orbital Horizon/Copernicus Sentinel Data 2025/Getty Images

via: CNN Updates - Iran's attacks on a key oil route.

[ed. Pretty tight quarters.]

Just Super Cub Flying - No BS

[ed. I could fall asleep to this. Wish I could have afforded one of these in my younger days (with floats!). See also: another video of AK super cub flying (and many more).

These Four States Are in Denial Over a Looming Water Crisis

Lake Mead is two-thirds empty. Lake Powell is even emptier.

Not for the first time, the seven Western states that rely on the Colorado River are fighting over how to keep these reservoirs from crashing — an event that could spur water shortages from Denver to Las Vegas to Los Angeles.

The tens of millions of people who rely on the Colorado River have weathered such crises before, even amid a stubborn quarter-century megadrought fueled by climate change. The states have always struck deals to use less water, overcoming their political differences to avert “dead pool” at Mead and Powell, meaning that water could no longer flow downstream.

This time, a deal may not be possible. And it’s clear who’s to blame.

Not the farmers who grow alfalfa and other feed for animals, despite the fact that they use one-third of all water in the Colorado River basin. Not California, even though the Golden State uses more river water than any of its neighbors. Not even the Trump administration, which has done a lousy job pressing the states to compromise.

No, the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming have emerged as the main obstacles to a fair deal. They’ve gummed up negotiations by refusing to accept mandatory cuts of any amount — unlike the Lower Basin states, which have spent years slashing water use.

Upper Basin leaders have long harbored ambitions of using more water to fuel economic development, especially in cities. “There’s this notion of keeping the dream of growth alive,” said John Fleck, a researcher at the University of New Mexico. “It’s difficult for people to reckon with the reality that they can’t keep that dream alive anymore.”

Federal officials have set a Feb. 14 deadline for the seven states to reach consensus, although negotiators blew past a November deadline with no consequence. The real cutoff is the end of 2026, when longstanding rules for assigning cuts to avoid shortages will expire.

Low snowpack levels across the Western United States this winter are raising the stakes. In some ways, though, the conflict is a century in the making.

Since 1922, the states have divvied up water under the Colorado River Compact, which gave 7.5 million acre-feet annually to the Lower Basin and 7.5 million acre-feet to the Upper Basin. Most water originates as Rocky Mountain snowmelt before flowing downstream to Lake Powell near the Utah-Arizona border. Once released from Powell, it flows through the Grand Canyon to Lake Mead, near Las Vegas.

But even though the two groups of states agreed to split the water evenly, Los Angeles and Phoenix grew bigger and faster than Denver and Salt Lake City, gobbling up more water. Lower Basin farmers and ranchers, too, used far more water than their Upper Basin counterparts — especially growers in California’s Imperial Valley, who staked out some of the river’s oldest and thus highest-priority water rights.

Global warming had other plans, too. There was never as much water in the river as negotiators assumed even back in 1922 — a fact that scientists knew at the time. The states spent decades outrunning that original sin by finding creative ways to conserve water when drought struck. But deal-making was easier when the river averaged, say, 13 million acre-feet. Over the past six years, as the effects of burning fossil fuels have mounted, flows averaged just 10.8 million acre-feet. That means the states will need to make much deeper cuts.

So far, no luck. The Upper and Lower Basins have spent several years at fierce loggerheads, with some negotiators growing vitriolic. State officials are still talking, most recently at a Jan. 30 meeting convened by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. But after two decades of collaborative problem-solving, longtime observers say they’ve never seen so much animosity.

Lower Basin officials largely blame Colorado, the de facto leader of the Upper Basin. They say Colorado won’t budge from what they consider the extreme legal position that the Upper Basin bears no responsibility for delivering water downstream from Powell to Mead for the Lower Basin’s use. They also fault Colorado for demanding that mandatory cuts fall entirely on the Lower Basin.

Upper Basin officials tell a different story. They insist that California and Arizona have been overconsuming water — and by their reading of the compact, that means it’s not their job to keep replenishing the Lower Basin’s savings account at Lake Mead. They also say it would be unfair to force them to cut back when California and Arizona are the real water hogs.

On the one hand, the numbers don’t lie: The Lower Basin states used nearly 6.1 million acre-feet in 2024, compared with the Upper Basin’s nearly 4.5 million, according to the federal government. The Imperial Irrigation District — which supplies farmers who grow alfalfa, broccoli, onions and other crops — used more water than the entire state of Colorado.

On the other hand, the Lower Basin has done far more to cut back than the Upper Basin. Los Angeles and Las Vegas residents have torn out grass lawns en masse; Vegas has water cops to police excessive water use by sprinkler systems. Farmers in Arizona and California are leaving fields dry, sometimes aided by federal incentive programs. California is investing in expensive wastewater recycling to reduce its dependence on imported water.

Mr. Fleck projected that the Lower Basin’s Colorado River consumption in 2025 would be its lowest since 1983. Imperial’s consumption would be its lowest since at least 1941.

California, Arizona and Nevada still waste plenty of water, but they’re prepared to go further. They’ve told the Upper Basin that as part of a post-2026 deal, they’re willing to reduce consumption by an additional 1.25 million acre-feet of water — but only if the Upper Basin shares the pain of further cuts during especially dry years.

Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming do not want to share the pain — at least not through mandatory cuts. They say they already cut back voluntarily during drought years, although independent experts are skeptical. They also say the Lower Basin states use more water than federal data show — something like 10 million acre-feet.

When I asked Becky Mitchell, Colorado’s lead negotiator, if her state plans to keep growing, she responded with an alarming comparison to the Lower Basin, musing that the Upper Basin would probably never use 10 million acre-feet. Thank goodness, because that kind of growth would more than bankrupt the Colorado River.

But even as she acknowledged that the Upper Basin states “have to live within hydrology,” she suggested they have a right to use more water.

“The compact gave us the protection to grow and develop at our own pace,” she said.

by Sammy Roth, NY Times | Read more:
Image: Jim Morgan
[ed. Hard to feel sorry for Arizona and Nevada who've been building like crazy over the last few decades.]

Here Come the Beetles

The nearly 100-year-old Wailua Municipal Golf Course is home to more than 580 coconut trees. It’s also one of Kaua‘i’s most visible sites for coconut rhinoceros beetle damage.

Located makai of Kūhiō Highway, trees that would normally have full, verdant leaves are dull and have V-shaped cuts in their fronds. Some are bare and look more like matchsticks.

It’s not for lack of trying to mitigate the invasive pest. The trees’ crowns have been sprayed with a pesticide twice, and the trunks were injected twice with a systemic pesticide for longer term protection.

The Kaua‘i Department of Parks & Recreation maintains that even though the trees still look damaged, the treatments are working. Staff have collected 1,679 fallen, dead adult beetles over the last three years.

The most recent treatment, a systemic pesticide that travels through the trees’ vascular systems, was done in January 2025. While crown sprays kill the beetle on contact, systemic pesticides require the beetles to feed from the trees to die. The bugs eat the trees’ hearts — where new fronds develop — so it can take months for foliage damage to appear.

 

“The general public sees these trees that are damaged and thinks, ‘Oh my goodness they’re getting whacked,’ but in actuality, we need them to get whacked to kill (the beetles),” said Patrick Porter, county parks director.

But with the beetles continuing to spread around the island, the county is increasingly turning its attention to green waste, mulch piles and other breeding sites, where beetles spend four to six months growing from eggs to adults. A single adult female beetle can lay up to 140 eggs in her lifetime.

“The reality is if you don’t go after the larvae and you don’t go after your mulch cycle, you’re just pissing in the wind,” said Kaua‘i County Council member Fern Holland. “Because there are just going to be hundreds and hundreds of them hatching all the time, and you can’t go after all of them.” (...)

Last May, the County Council allocated $100,000 for invasive species and another $100,000 for CRB. It was the first time the county designated funds specifically to address the beetle.

Niki Kunioka-Volz, economic development specialist with the Kaua‘i Office of Economic Development, said none of that funding has been spent yet. They’re considering using it to help get the breeding site at the Wailua golf course under control, such as by purchasing an air curtain burner, a fan-powered incinerator of sorts to dispose of green waste. The burner could also be a tool for the broader community. (...)

In 2024, the county received $200,000 from the state Department of Agriculture. That money was used for a CRB outreach campaign, training CRB detection dogs and distributing deterrent materials. State funding was also expected to help the county purchase a curtain burner, but that plan fell through.

Earlier this month, state legislators threatened to cut invasive species funding from the newly expanded Hawai‘i Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity over its slow progress in curbing threats such as coconut rhinoceros beetles.

“I’d like to see the pressure put on them to release the funds to the counties,” Holland said.

by Noelle Fujii-Oride, Honolulu Civil Beat | Read more:
Image: Kevin Fujii/David Croxford/Civil Beat
[ed. Tough, ugly, able to leap sleeping bureaucrats in a single bound. See also: As Palm-Killing Beetles Spread On Big Island, State Action Is Slow (CB):]

***

It has been nearly two years since the first rhinoceros coconut beetle was discovered on Hawaiʻi island. And yet, despite ongoing concern by residents, the state is moving slowly in devising its response.

Seven months ago, the state’s Department of Agriculture and Biosecurity said it would begin working to stop the spread of CRB, within and beyond North Kona. But a meeting of the agency’s board Tuesday marked the first concrete step to do so by regulators. Now, as agriculture department staff move to streamline and resolve apparent issues in the proposed regulations, it will likely take until March for the board to consider implementing them.

Many of the attendees at Tuesday’s meeting, including residents of other islands, said that the state is lagging on its pledge to regulate the movement of agricultural materials while the destructive pest is spreading and killing both the island’s coconut palms and its endangered, endemic loulu palms.

The First Two Years

Before making landfall on Hawaiʻi island in 2023, the beetles spent almost a decade in apparent confinement on Oʻahu.

At first they appeared to be isolated to Waikoloa. Then, in March of last year, larvae and beetles were discovered at Kona International Airport and the state-owned, 179-acre Keāhole Agriculture Park, before spreading further.

In response, the county implemented a voluntary order to discourage the movement of potentially-infested live plants, mulch and green waste, and other landscaping materials such as compost from the area in June 2025. The order was described as “a precursor to a mandatory compliance structure” to be implemented by the state, according to a press release from the time. (...)

The board spent about an hour considering the petition and hearing testimony. And while many who testified made recommendations about actual protocol that might be put into place, the board merely voted to move forward in the process. So it’s not yet clear whether it will adopt the Big Island petitioner’s proposed rules or create its own.

211-mile Ambler Road Project Through Gates of the Arctic National Park Gets Approval

Trump Sacrifices Alaska Wilderness to Help AI Companies

Trump’s approval of the Ambler Road Project is a reversal for the federal government. Only last year, the Bureau of Land Management released its Record of Decision selecting “No Action” on Ambler Road, in cooperation with Alaska tribal councils, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and many others.

In the document, the impact on fish habitat, water and air quality, disruption of groundwater flow, hazardous materials from spills, and the negative impact on the Western Arctic caribou herd, which has been steadily declining since 2017, were all cited as reasons for denial. The Record of Decision also stated that the Ambler Road Project would forever alter the culture and traditional practices of Alaska Native communities, who have lived and thrived in the region for centuries.

by Gavin Feek, The Intercept |  Read more:

Image: Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post via Getty Images

[ed. I used to permit/mitigate mine development in Alaska. Imagine what a 211-mile gravel road, 30+ years of year-round maintenance, and relentless heavy truck/support traffic will do to the area, its wildlife and nearby native communities (not to mention blasting a massive mining crater, constructing sprawling support facilities, airstrip(s), and discharging millions of gallons of wastewater (from somewhere, to... somewhere).]

via:

Target on Tongass

GRAVINA ISLAND, Tongass National Forest — Rain drips from the tips of branches of a grandmother cedar, growing for centuries. In verdant moss amid hip-high sword ferns, the bones of a salmon gleam, picked clean by feasting wildlife. “Gronk,” intones a raven, from somewhere high overhead in the forest canopy.

This is the Tongass National Forest, in Southeast Alaska. At nearly 17 million acres, it is the largest national forest in our country by far — and its wildest. These public lands are home to more grizzly bears, more wolves, more whales, more wild salmon than any other national forest. More calving glaciers; shining mountains and fjords; and pristine beaches, where intact ancient forests meet a black-green sea. These wonders drew more than 3 million visitors from around the nation and the world to Alaska from May 2024 through April 2025 — a record.

In the forest, looming Sitka spruce, western hemlock and cedars quill a lush understory of salal and huckleberry. Life grows upon life, with hanks of moss and lichen swaddling trunks and branches. Nothing really dies here, it just transforms into new life. Fallen logs are furred with tree seedlings, as a new generation rises. After they spawn, salmon die — and transubstantiate into the bodies of ravens, bears and wolves they nourish.

Strewn across thousands of islands, and comprising most of Southeast Alaska, the Tongass was designated a national forest by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907. The trees here were coveted by the timber industry even before Alaska was a state, and industrial logging began in 1947 with construction of two pulp mills, each with a federally subsidized 50-year contract for public timber.

While the Tongass is big, only about 33% of it is forested in old and second growth, and clear-cuts disproportionately targeted the most productive areas with the biggest trees. In North Prince of Wales Island, notes Kate Glover, senior attorney for EarthJustice in Juneau, more than 77% of the original contiguous old growth was cut.

The logging boom that began in the 1950s is long since bust; the last pulp mill in Alaska shut in 1997. But now, the prospect of greatly increased cutting is once again ramping up.

President Donald Trump wants to revoke a federal rule that could potentially open more than 9 million acres of the Tongass to logging, including about 2.5 million acres of productive old growth. The Roadless Area Conservation Rule, widely known as the Roadless Rule, was adopted by President Bill Clinton in 2001 to protect the wildest public lands in our national forests, after an extensive public process. Trump revoked it during his first term of office. President Joe Biden reinstated it. Now Trump has announced plans to rescind it again.

“Once again, President Trump is removing absurd obstacles to common sense management of our natural resources by rescinding the overly restrictive roadless rule,” said Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, in a June announcement. “This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests … to enjoy and reap the benefits of this great land.”

The Roadless Rule is one of the most important federal policies many people have never heard of, protecting nearly 45 million acres in national forests all over the country from logging, mining and other industrial development. In Washington state, the rule preserves about 2 million acres of national forest — magnificent redoubts of old growth and wildlife, such as the Dark Divide in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest.

The rule is popular. After Rollins announced the proposed rollback, more than 500,000 people posted comments defending it in just 21 days during an initial public comment period. Another public comment period will open in the spring.

At stake in the Tongass is one of the last, largest coastal temperate rainforests in the world. (...)

The Tongass also is home to more productive old-growth trees (older than 150 years) than any other national forest. And the biggest trees store the most carbon.

In a world in which wilderness is rapidly disappearing, “the best is right here,” DellaSala says. “If you punch in roads and log it, you lose it. You flip the system to a degraded state.

“What happens right now is what will make the difference in the Tongass.”

“Who knew this could happen?”

Revoking the Roadless Rule isn’t the only threat to the Tongass. It’s also being clear-cut, chunk by chunk, through land transfers, swaps and intergovernmental agreements affecting more than 88,000 acres just since 2014.

Joshua Wright bends low over a stump, counting its tightly packed rings. Certainly 500, maybe 700, it’s hard to tell in the driving rain. This stump he and DellaSala are standing on is as wide as they are tall. “Who knew this could happen?” says Wright, looking at the clear-cut, with nearly every tree taken, all the way to the beach fringe. So close to the beach, delicate domes of sea urchin shells sit amid the logging slash, as do abalone shells, dropped by seabirds, their shimmering opalescent colors so out of place in a bleak ruin of stumps.

This is representative of the type of logging that can happen when lands are removed from the national forest system, says Wright, who leads the Southeast Alaska program for the Legacy Forest Defense Coalition, based in Tacoma. More such cuts could be coming. Legislation proposed last summer would privatize more than 115,000 acres of the Tongass.

The legislation is part of a yearslong effort since 1985 to wrest more of the Tongass from federal control to private, for-profit Native corporations. In 1971, a federal land claims settlement act transferred 44 million acres of federal land to regional and village corporations owned by Alaska Native shareholders.

Five communities that were not included in that 1971 settlement would receive land under the so-called landless legislation, though none of them met the original criteria for eligibility. Native people in these communities were made at-large/landless shareholders, with payments to them managed by Sealaska Corporation, which owns and manages a range of for-profit businesses and investments throughout Southeast Alaska. (...)

Industrial scale clear-cut logging in the Tongass, in addition to its environmental destruction, has never made economic sense. U.S. taxpayers heavily subsidize the cutting, in part through the construction and maintenance of Forest Service roads to access the forest. A recent study done by the independent, nonpartisan group Taxpayers for Common Sense found that the Forest Service lost $16.1 million on Tongass timber sales in fiscal year 2019, and $1.7 billion over the past four decades. Most of Alaska’s timber harvest is exported as raw logs to Asian markets. (...)

Only about 240 people work in the logging business in Alaska today, most of them at two sawmills. The industry, states the Alaska Forest Association, an industry group, will collapse unless it is fed more old growth from public lands. The AFA made the claim in a lawsuit, joined with other plaintiffs, against the Forest Service, demanding release of more old-growth forest from the Tongass for cutting.

Booming business

But while the timber industry is fighting for a lifeline, more than 8,263 people work locally in a thriving tourism business built on wild and scenic Alaska. In 2023, tourism became the largest economic sector in Southeast, according to a 2024 report by Southeast Conference, the regional economic development organization.

Mary Catharine Martin, spokesperson for SalmonState, a nonprofit based in Juneau, notes that the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center at the Tongass National Forest is visited by about 700,000 people annually from all over the world. “This is what people come to see,” says Martin, regarding the glacier, its ice glowing blue as a husky’s eye. “They come to see this amazing place, and to be out in it.”

by Linda Mapes, Seattle Times |  Read more:

Image: Amy Gulick

[ed. They've been chipping away at the Tongass for decades. Trading old growth trees for pulp and chopsticks.]

Leonardo’s Wood Charring Method Predates Japanese Practice

Yakisugi is a Japanese architectural technique for charring the surface of wood. It has become quite popular in bioarchitecture because the carbonized layer protects the wood from water, fire, insects, and fungi, thereby prolonging the lifespan of the wood. Yakisugi techniques were first codified in written form in the 17th and 18th centuries. But it seems Italian Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci wrote about the protective benefits of charring wood surfaces more than 100 years earlier, according to a paper published in Zenodo, an open repository for EU funded research.

Check the notes

As previously reported, Leonardo produced more than 13,000 pages in his notebooks (later gathered into codices), less than a third of which have survived. The notebooks contain all manner of inventions that foreshadow future technologies: flying machines, bicycles, cranes, missiles, machine guns, an “unsinkable” double-hulled ship, dredges for clearing harbors and canals, and floating footwear akin to snowshoes to enable a person to walk on water. Leonardo foresaw the possibility of constructing a telescope in his Codex Atlanticus (1490)—he wrote of “making glasses to see the moon enlarged” a century before the instrument’s invention.

In 2003, Alessandro Vezzosi, director of Italy’s Museo Ideale, came across some recipes for mysterious mixtures while flipping through Leonardo’s notes. Vezzosi experimented with the recipes, resulting in a mixture that would harden into a material eerily akin to Bakelite, a synthetic plastic widely used in the early 1900s. So Leonardo may well have invented the first manmade plastic.

The notebooks also contain Leonardo’s detailed notes on his extensive anatomical studies. Most notably, his drawings and descriptions of the human heart captured how heart valves can control blood flow 150 years before William Harvey worked out the basics of the human circulatory system. (In 2005, a British heart surgeon named Francis Wells pioneered a new procedure to repair damaged hearts based on Leonardo’s heart valve sketches and subsequently wrote the book The Heart of Leonardo.)

In 2023, Caltech researchers made another discovery: lurking in the margins of Leonardo’s Codex Arundel were several small sketches of triangles, their geometry seemingly determined by grains of sand poured out from a jar. The little triangles were his attempt to draw a link between gravity and acceleration—well before Isaac Newton came up with his laws of motion. By modern calculations, Leonardo’s model produced a value for the gravitational constant (G) to around 97 percent accuracy. And Leonardo did all this without a means of accurate timekeeping and without the benefit of calculus. The Caltech team was even able to re-create a modern version of the experiment.

“Burnt Japanese cedar”

Annalisa Di Maria, a Leonardo expert with the UNESCO Club of Florence, collaborated with molecular biologist and sculptor Andrea da Montefeltro and art historian Lucica Bianchi on this latest study, which concerns the Codex Madrid II. They had noticed one nearly imperceptible phrase in particular on folio 87r concerning wood preservation: “They will be better preserved if stripped of bark and burned on the surface than in any other way,” Leonardo wrote.

“This is not folklore,” the authors noted. “It is a technical intuition that precedes cultural codification.” Leonardo was interested in the structural properties of materials like wood, stone, and metal, as both an artist and an engineer, and would have noticed from firsthand experience that raw wood with its bark intact retained moisture and decayed more quickly. Furthermore, Leonardo’s observation coincides with what the authors describe as a “crucial moment for European material culture,” when “woodworking was receiving renewed attention in artistic workshops and civil engineering studies.”

Leonardo did not confine his woody observations to just that one line. The Codex includes discussions of how different species of wood conferred different useful properties: oak and chestnut for strength, ash and linden for flexibility, and alder and willow for underwater construction. Leonardo also noted that chestnut and beech were ideal as structural reinforcements, while maple and linden worked well for constructing musical instruments given their good acoustic properties. He even noted a natural method for seasoning logs: leaving them “above the roots” for better sap drainage.

The Codex Madrid II dates to 1503-1505, over a century before the earliest known written codifications of yakisugi, although it is probable that the method was used a bit before then. Per Di Maria et al., there is no evidence of any direct contact between Renaissance European culture and Japanese architectural practices, so this seems to be a case of “convergent invention.”

The benefits of this method of wood preservation have since been well documented by science, although the effectiveness is dependent on a variety of factors, including wood species and environmental conditions. The fire’s heat seals the pores of the wood so it absorbs less water—a natural means of waterproofing. The charred surface serves as natural insulation for fire resistance. And stripping the bark removes nutrients that attract insects and fungi, a natural form of biological protection.

by Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica |  Read more:
Images: A. Di maria et al., 2025; Unimoi/CC BY-SA 4.0; and Lorna Satchell/CC BY 4.0