On Meeting an Extraterrestrial (Ahwaz, Iran Part 3/3)

[Continued from part 2]

Probably one of the most enjoyable parts of the conference was interacting with students. Many of them were wanting advice on how to live overseas. One middle-aged woman shared her concerns about thinking that she wasn’t going to get a good letter of recommendation because her supervisor would be unhappy at her leaving… but then if she did manage to go overseas and couldn’t get a permanent job there, she would have burned her bridges professionally, making it all the more difficult when she returned.

This student was also a bodybuilder. His biceps were like cantaloupes. The banner in the background shows a globe wearing an air filter mask.

However, for many of them, interacting with a foreigner, especially an American, was a complete novelty. They had a million questions about what cities had I been to, what I thought of Iranian people, what I thought of Iranian government, what about American government, what was America like, what was my family like, what was my religion? We even discussed what we typically eat for breakfast. Sometimes students that were too shy to talk would just gather to watch me, say, drink a cup of tea or peel an orange. I’d scratch my nose and a nearby gaggle of girls would giggle.

Originally, this was hard for me to understand. Why would anyone be so inquisitive? And how did they get so much misinformation about us? Then during the group photos for the closing ceremonies, I stood next to a senior scientist that leaned in towards me and whispered “You’re from America eh?… I am from Iraq.”

I was stunned. Now I was the student, repeating the million questions back to him. I felt like I had met an extraterrestrial and was trying to extract all the secrets of the universe from him. I didn’t know what to ask first. What’s it like in Iraq? Do you sleep standing up? May I watch you peel an orange?

A special moment came when I was introduced to the religious leader of the university. We talked about dust and water, religion and science, Iran and America. Islam is a wellspring of insights about the nature of knowledge and the knowledge of nature (Zoroastrianism, the original Persian religion, also taught ecology but that’s another story).

The Koran tells a story of a man that was rewarded with heaven for giving water to a thirsty dog [Islamic dogs usually don’t get much respect, they are forbidden as pets]. Water is such a fundamental human right that Islamic law prohibits interfering with an enemy’s water supply (e.g. destroy its dams, poison its wells, block supply convoys), even if you are at war. If your enemy asks for water, you must give it to him, even if you are on the battlefield. By sharing water, one is sharing peace. I offered that in a similar way, Iran’s home-cooked food could be an instrument for diplomacy; come, friends, let us beat our swords to make kabob koobideh.

Kitty, me, the Ayatollah’s representative, and Dr Sari

During one of the talks, a speaker drew connections between drought and dust. In particular dry lakebeds are a major source of dust. Drought had hit the region badly and nearby Lake Urmia had fallen so low that it bloomed red. He likened the color to nature’s traffic light, signaling that whatever was happening needed to stop. This and dust were symptoms of lack of balance in the environment. It wasn’t alright. People were suffering. The environment was being broken.

Beneath their layers of grime and pollution, I found the scientists of Ahwaz clean and pure, smart and engaged. And they were serious about their water- my next stop was going to be the largest earth-fill dam (by height and dam volume), Upper Gotvand Dam, under construction only about 100 km north of the city.

[finished 3/3]

International Conference on Dust Haze (Ahwaz, Iran part 2/3)

[Don’t forget part 1!]

Dust gets into everything here, literally and figuratively. Nearly all the cars look as if they just came from off-roading. The car wash business must make a killing. When I tried to clean our dormitory windows to get a better view, I realized there was a layer of dust on the inside. According to one of the speakers, 70% of days in Ahwaz have unhealthy dust levels.

Typical muddy/dusty Ahwazian car

I woke on the first morning with a scratchy throat and smelled like I had slept by a campfire. Apparently this wasn’t even one of the bad days, this being February and all. Ahwaz’s typical daytime high temperature is more than 100 F (38 C) five months of the year. 120 F (50 C) is not rare. The summer heat is oppressive and the high humidity is suffocating (because Ahwaz is less than an hour drive from the Persian Gulf).

A good amount of the pollution comes from local industry and cars, but according to some of the researchers I met, 90% of the dust comes from abroad, especially Iraq, which itself was only about 40 miles away. While Iran has many homegrown challenges, this seems to be another of those problems that has been brought to it from faraway and causes daily suffering for ordinary citizens.

Iran is in the center of this picture. Red areas are those that produce dust according to the US Air Force Weather Agency. Ahwaz is in southwest Iran, near the dark red areas above the north tip of the Persian Gulf. The source for this image, the COMET education page, has all you would ever want to know about the meteorology of dust. Registration at COMET is free.

As seems the typical Persian way, the conference organizers overwhelmed us with hospitality. On the way to the meeting hall, our motorcade scraped over speed bumps because we had so many escorts and handlers. The conference itself was a major production, with flower arrangements, red carpets (literally) and each session introduced by someone I was told was a television celebrity. The science talks started late because a number of high-level politicians and other government officials showed up unexpectedly and were given time at the podium.

Dignitaries at the dust conference.

The conference was filmed and I gave interviews with the media. During the opening ceremonies, video of the speakers and participants were projected onto large screens. Kitty was disappointed that she and our translator (Fazel) had miscoordinated part of our schedule; when some of the times for events (that we were going to miss) were announced, she playfully rolled her eyes at Fazel and acted upset, only to discover that she was live on camera and her reaction was being displayed 15 feet tall. When she talked to the cameraman later, he said “I was told to focus on you because you are our distinguished and honored guests”. Personally, I’m not sure I like the person Kitty becomes when she’s on the Jumbotron.

Our host, M. Amin Asoodar of the Agricultural Engineering facility of Ramin University, on the big screen

Camera crane operator prepares to zoom in on Kitty

Part of the conference was translated into another language and we could listen in on headsets. Simultaneous translation is seriously challenging, and it is especially mind-bending if the material is technical. There were long stretches of silence in the headphones and the translator later told me that it was just too difficult to translate things like the lyrics of the songs that were sung. There was also no point in trying to translate references and imagery that are particular to Persian culture or involved alliteration or wordplay. Translation is also rarely simultaneous, so we might have been looking at one slide while hearing about what was presented a few slides ago.

The translator at his workstation backstage

Immediately before my presentation was a talk about the impacts of humans on the environment, especially impacts on the atmosphere. I was mostly going over my notes, but would occasionally look up to see some English words on a slide that was otherwise entirely in Farsi. Some eyebrow-raising English words included “HAARP”, “California”, “Woodpecker”, “Thermobaric bombs”, “Afghanistan” and “Kosovo”. Weirdly enough, I was almost able to follow the thread, having listened to Art Bell’s paranormal radio show throughout grad school.

HAARP is a military research program and a high powered radio transmitter in Alaska, trying to send radiation into the upper atmosphere; it has been described as a “magnet for conspiracy theorists”, blamed for all kinds of natural disasters, but also thought to be an attempt at mind control. The bombs part might have been about how people have thought about using explosions in the air to redirect weather patterns. The discussion of war might have included something about America’s use of white phosphorous and depleted uranium which are kind-of-sort-of chemical weapons (maybe). I don’t know what woodpeckers have to do with anything. [… some googling later, it turns out that Woodpecker was the Soviet equivalent of HAARP, another “psychotronic” device that shot mind control beams during the Cold War].

I think it’s unfair to criticize someone else’s talk when they wouldn’t have a chance to defend themselves online (which is why I don’t include the speaker’s name), but I mention it because I’m fascinated by the social science/social psychology of weather modification and how people form their opinions about it. Also a few students asked for my reaction to what they thought was a strange talk in an otherwise normal set of presentations.

I’ll table the topic because weather modification is complicated and interesting enough to deserve its own post. But one student did ask “is weather modification research really banned in the US?” I’m almost 100% positive that the answer is no. There are many active cloud seeding programs across the Western US (at least) and there was a strong weather modification research program in Wyoming.

I present about operational hydrology and its parallels with dust forecasting

[Continued tomorrow]

The Dirtiest City in the World (Ahwaz, Iran part 1/3)

That morning, we had seen dustings of snow on the peaks of the Zagros mountains. This made seeing white on the ground outside Ahwaz (sometimes spelled Ahvaz) all the more disorienting. We were nearly at sea level and had been peeling off layers of clothing as the day got warmer. It couldn’t possibly be snow.

The marks were salt. Salt damage on the land surface is usually a very bad sign, like a wound that hasn’t received the proper treatment. Salt marks can occur naturally, but often it is because of irrigation with salty water, cutting down of trees, or high water tables (also caused by irrigation or other changes in surface flow). It is poisonous to plants and salt was used to ruin the farmland of conquered nations. By some estimates, a third of Australia’s wheat belt could be sterilized by salt in 20 years. Salt even corrodes buildings and bridges and very Sphinx itself is threatened by soil salinity.  

Salt whizzes by in the foreground

Ahwaz sits on top of what is called a “Supergiant” oil field, meaning that it is one of the few places with more than ten billion barrels of oil in the ground. Oil wells shoot perpetual fireballs into the sky. The gas flares themselves are a tourist destination. Oil economically dwarfs anything that could be made from hydropower. The region’s petroculture reminded me of Texas or Wyoming even though neither of those places have anything close to the size of oil reserves of Ahwaz. Strangely enough, our driver spent lunchtime at the filling station because the lines to fill up for gas were so long (nearly all cars run on a mix of petrol and compressed natural gas, the latter being much cheaper).

A Russian-built power plant belches smoke

What’s not salt or smoke in Ahwaz is dust… I came to Ahwaz as an invited keynote speaker at the First International Conference on Dust Haze and its harmful effects. My talk included some information about dust impacts on hydrology in the Western US. Dust reduces the Colorado River’s flow by about 5% and makes the flow come a few weeks earlier than it would otherwise. (Google Tom Painter, Colorado, San Juan for more links).

From last year’s dust storm in Ahwaz.

Iran is trying to set up dust forecasting systems, however, so most of my talk was making recommendations based on my experiences with forecasting rivers. There are questions of what can you forecast versus what should you forecast? How can you communicate the forecasts? How can you make forecasts that help people make decisions? How do you predict systems that are partly natural, but also partly controlled by people? Can you predict storms before they start, or can you just watch them track across the landscape? 

[Continued tomorrow]

The Pulse of the Blue Vein (Southwest Iran)

Tom looking for streamgages. This turned out to be a filthy latrine.

There were few things we enjoyed more in Iran than simply driving and looking out the window. Every valley is different from the previous one and the craggy mountains are capped with snow. The folds and buckles in the landscape are a roadside geologist’s dream. There is the occasional verdant irrigated field, but otherwise the rock and soil look bleached white from the punishing sun. In Shiraz we met our translator (and Animal Sciences student Fazel Almasi) and driver (Saeed Shariati) before the four of us started the eight hour journey towards Ahwaz.

Strange ridges in the hillsides

More geologic oddities

We took dozens of photos and several time-lapse videos from the windows as we drove through. Too often one of us would be adjusting the camera settings in the viewfinder when suddenly we were whizzing past a vast military complex with lookout towers, barbed wire and anti-aircraft guns. By the time we knew what was happening, we were exchanging astonished and confused glances with military guards.

Typical mountain pass. That might be a police stop in the background, it might not.

Nobody stopped us, but it was exactly the kind of thing that could have gotten us in trouble because a few of these were the contested nuclear research sites. It looks all the more suspicious for us because the Iranians themselves rarely take pictures of just landscapes while they’re on vacation. Instead, someone is usually posing or there’s some activity for the camera. 

We watched an earthmover (on the left) drive across a river because it was too heavy for the bridge

As beautiful as the mountains of Iran are, nearly all the buildings seem under construction, under destruction or, more often, both at the same time. The first floor of a building might be occupied by a store that looked like it had been there for years. The second story would have three walls complete and a neat stack of fresh bricks on the floor. The top story would look like it had received artillery fire, the ceiling partially missing with twisted rebar exposed.

Southeast of Basht, along highway 86, the finely angled mountains start closing in and meet at a towering gap. The aqua blue vein of a river runs alongside the road and the two squeeze together to make it through the pass. We craned our necks while rounding a bend and crossing the high bridge. Kitty then yelled “streamgage, we have streamgage!” while I exclaimed “Raingage, evaporation pan, stop stop!”, no doubt startling our driver.

We pulled to the side and crossed back over the river on a second bridge parallel to the first. Along the banks were the remains of a third (and possibly fourth?) cobblestone bridge. We could only imagine how ancient the ruins were (100 years old? 2000 years?) but it was clear something cataclysmic had happened there in the past.

Bridge remnants

The brilliant blue streamgage was at the bottom of a spiral staircase and at the end of a long concrete platform extending out into the river. The platform was like a doctor’s finger, stretched across the river’s wrist, measuring the pulse of the blue vein.

Walking out to the stilling well

The view upstream from the gage

360 panorama from gage

The site didn’t look new, but it seemed like it had aged well. It was well-maintained and clean as if it had never been vandalized (which is rare for things that are typically so accessible and exposed). The cableway and its cable car (for manual measurements) looked like what you might find in the dictionary entry for cable car; it was a museum-quality specimen. Nothing seemed overbuilt or underbuilt, it was just right, integrated with and complementing the landscape like a Frank Lloyd Wright building. We giddily posed for pictures as a nearby goat was unsure if it was going up or down the steep hill.

On the opposite bank was a climate station. Sensor-wise, this place was loaded for bear. There were was (at least) a wind vane (for speed and direction) and temperature, humidity and radiation (i.e. sunshine). There was a raised white box with shutters (a “Cotton Shelter”) that probably contained thermometers, barometers and things for humidity. Again, it was laid out to design specs.

The vast majority of weather stations across the globe have just a raingage and a thermometer; it is exceedingly rare to find this many sensors in one site, never mind redundant versions of the same thing. For example, I counted three raingages and two (!) evaporation pans. This doesn’t even include the streamgage across the way (which itself had both automated and manual ways of measuring the flow). 

Dueling evaporation pans

I climbed up the fence (and tore my pants) to get a better photo of the climate station. Kitty scolded me, saying that we were going to get in trouble with the authorities for taking pictures of sensitive water infrastructure. Just two months ago I was rousted by the police in the US for doing this kind of thing.

I asked our guide if he thought the police would mind us taking photos. He shrugged, “It could be. But we are nowhere. When was last time you saw police?”

Satisfied, we walked back to the car only to notice we had parked by a police trailer. A traffic cop dozed in a plastic chair by the side of the road.

As we drove from Basht and Ahwaz, the landscape became less like Eden and more like Mad Max. The mountains gave way to hills that turned into numbing plains. The trees gave way to shrubs that turned into bare dirt. As the sun dropped, the haze thickened and the smell worsened. We passed labyrinthine refineries. By nightfall, we could see silhouettes of churning oil wells, metal monsters groaning in the darkness.

We had entered the dirtiest city in the world, Ahwaz.

Gas flares near Ahwaz

The Mirrored Mosques of Shiraz (Shah Cheragh)

The day after going to Persopolis I gave another lecture at the Shiraz University Civil Engineering Department, hosted by Mohammad Abedini, the head of the department.

Late in the afternoon, Mojtaba Pakparvar, Research Scientist in Soil Physics, graciously took us to some of the other essential sites of Shiraz, such as the tombs of Saadi and Hafez, Iran’s two best known poets.

Inscriptions at the Poet’s Tomb

Although they aren’t the most visually stunning places, Iranians completely love going to these tombs. A favorite activity is randomly turning to a page in one of their poetry books and interpreting what is there as being guidance on what to do, a bit like the I-Ching. Near the end of my time in Iran I tried this when I was wondering if we should still go to Cairo despite all the unrest in Egypt. The poem was incomprehensible to me, much like how I imagine Shakespeare reads to foreigners. However, a former literature teacher helped me interpret it as “try not to do business with people that are known to break contracts." Duly noted.

Mojtaba and me imitating the poses of 18 year old tourists

When we asked Mojtaba to read some of writing on the walls, he pleasantly surprised us with pitch-perfect and heartfelt singing of the poem.

We passed through the Bazaar which is a large and primitive version of a shopping mall. It would take you five minutes in this place to realize that the economic sanctions are not working. Maybe things are more expensive than they would be otherwise, but the Bazaar has fifty million copies of everything. Moreover, Iranians shop like it’s a sport.

Everything in this picture is a woven carpet, even the framed $100 bill. If you custom order something, it’ll take a year to make.  

This kid was ready to make a sale. “What you want, mister? Name your price.” Mojtaba treated Kitty to a box of sweets that looked like a book (much like those “gun-hidden-in-a-book” books you see in the murder mystery movies). Now she can pretend to be learning when she’s really snacking.

Old eyeglasses. Nearby there was a Gramophone.

Hand-painted metal plates and vases are a popular and inexpensive specialty of Shiraz.

On leaving the Bazaar, I saw the largest dome I had ever seen on a mosque. I asked “What is that?”

“You don’t know? Oh, that is definitely a must-see.”

This was the Shah Cheragh, a name that translates into “King of the Light”. It contains tombs of important figures in Shia Islam. Various places of prayer surround an immense courtyard.

It was time for the evening prayer and Mojtaba wanted to go in to pray. Normally, only Muslims are allowed inside, but Mojtaba ferried us in past the guards. The dress code is strict and Kitty wasn’t liking having to wear the flowery bedsheet they loaned her. We turned in our shoes and the men and women separated into different entrances of the mosque.

Kitty in her rental Chador and me.

The main entrance

Detail of the inlaid mosaics

Ornate reliefs

Inside, the walls and ceiling were decorated with intricate colored glass and mirrors. Every part of the floor was covered with thick Persian carpets. Many men were engaged in solemn rituals of personal prayer, but otherwise no one was talking and the room was hushed.     

No pictures are allowed inside, so here are photos of another minor shrine in a similar style in another part of the city (the Hamza Shrine). The two don’t really compare when it comes to size and brilliance, but it gives you a flavor of what Shiraz’s style of mirrored mosques.

The center item is a tomb. The curtain at the back separates men from women.

A typical dome

 

Sparkle, Kitty, sparkle

I have tried unsuccessfully to describe how moving of an experience it was to be in the Mosque. Coming from a religious family, I have been to more churches and cathedrals than I can remember and have toured many incense-filled temples throughout Asia. Usually these sites are grim and cold. Shah Cheragh was resplendent and gave off an ecstatic feel, in the true sense of the word. I was completely humbled.  

It is easy to forget where you are or what you are looking at. It was transcendental.

In a way, looking into the mirrors reminded me of what it is like to be a scientist. My image was being reflected in the mirrors. They were angled in different ways so that it was not obviously clear what I was looking at. 

Perhaps there is one true reality, but I will never get a clear reflection of it. Some parts may be easy to figure out but other parts are completely obscure. There can be many different perspectives and no one ever sees exactly what anyone else does. Moreover, I’m the observer and I see what I want (or hope) to see, but it takes discipline and self-awareness to recognize illusions. Discovering the truth requires moving away from familiar stances, getting new perspectives and then making sense of the connections between old and new information. Sometimes it’s even fine to take a break from reducing and deducing to bask in the glorious complexity and splendor of the mirrors themselves. Just don’t think that the dazzling complexity is all there is.

 

In the main hall of the Mosque there is a small alcove of marble with a step down as if into a wellspring. In the other room is an elevated platform chair. When I asked Mojtaba about it he said that sermons and teachings are given from the platform (called a minbar) but actual worship is by standing in the well (a mijrab). Some mirjabs have soil in the bottom. Worshipers face the mirjab, which also points in the direction of Mecca, the holy city. All prayers, even those done in hotel rooms, face Mecca (hotels have signs on the ceiling showing which way to face).   

In Islam, the spiritual leader is not a king or superior of the worshipers, but instead is a servant. Standing in the well (the lowest point in the room) is symbolism that the leader is always respectful of his followers. Christianity has altars and pulpits that are raised but I had never heard of a priest going lower than the congregation when it is time to engage in the most serious form of prayer.

It reminded me of the relationship between a streamgage and its catchment. Water from across the landscape flows downhill and collects at a point on the river. It is a place of respectful awe of what goes on upstream. That point is a truthful reflection of everything that has happened above it. At the same time, when all these events and states of being are collected and focused, the result is unlike anything that can be found elsewhere in the catchment (i.e. the river is often largest, widest, deepest, etc. at its most downstream point).

There was also something about how the mijrab is meant to protect the leader from flying arrows (i.e. assassination attempts) while he’s praying. Apparently that happens often enough to be concerned. I couldn’t verify that story, but I had recently read Lesley Hazelton’s description of the the assassination of the Caliph Omar, stabbed six times as he bent down for morning prayer in the mosque. [The book, “After the Prophet” is narrative non-fiction about the events that led to the Shia-Sunni split in Islam- it’s an enjoyable and informative read, a total page-turner]. 

We have reached many famous destinations this year, but my favorite part of travel is being left speechless by a place that I never knew existed. I knew that Shiraz was a place we would have to come back to.

Persepolis (the Value of Long-term Records)

With Jafar Nazemosadat as the host, my next stop after Tehran was to give a lecture at the University of Shiraz College of Agriculture about river forecasting. After the talk Jafar, Kitty and I drove out to see Persepolis.

From about 550-330 BC, Persepolis was the capitol of the Persian Empire. This was an empire that extended from Libya to India and is the greatest empire that ever existed in terms of percent of population of the world (44%) being ruled.

Compared to other ancient wonders, an unusual thing about this place was that it wasn’t built with slave labor; documents still exist showing how craftsmen were paid for their work. There is also evidence that they routinely recorded the weather, such as measuring wind direction by watching rising smoke. There were also solar calendars, e.g. they knew it was time to start planting crops when the sunlight passed through two small holes in the wall (think of Indiana Jones with the staff in the temple room when he was trying to find out where the Lost Ark was buried).

Although it was one of the original Seven Wonders of the World, Persepolis sees nowhere near the number of tourists that it used to because of the closure of Iran and the sanctions. When we arrived, we pulled into an empty parking lot. 

Jafar surveys a distant garbage can in the parking lot

The site is a large complex of building foundations and remnants of columns. You need several hours to get around the whole place.

Jafar and I on the hill above Persepolis.

Tribute for the King was brought from afar to Persepolis. Delegates walked through the buildings and were meant to be completely overwhelmed by its grandeur. It is a long walk from the grand entrance to the inner chambers and the stairways are lined with intricate carvings. Tribute bearers could see all of the other tribute that has been given, including riches and all sorts of animals.

How does your tribute size up?

As outsiders, all we could do is marvel and inarticulately repeat “Wow… wow… wow…”. This does not even include the astonishingly innovative plumbing and sewer system below the site that is largely hidden from view and is not mentioned in the interpretive signs.  

There are a few well preserved sculptures on the grounds such as these animals.

As the afternoon went on, we noticed a drop in Jafar’s usual enthusiasm. As a native Iranian, he has been to the site a number of times and has seen how it changed throughout the years, watching it fall into disrepair.

He noted how all the onsite museums were “temporarily closed”. The phrase “temporarily closed” is always just a good intention, a forecast. In reality, they’re closed until they’re open. No one would ever say “permanently open” because who knows how long that would last?

He said that he was angry and sad that the government’s priorities were elsewhere, that they weren’t taking care of their treasures and their legacy. They had lost sight of the long-term and that the neglect of this site was going to lead to regret eventually.

This wasn’t the first time that something bad happened to this site. For one, Alexander the Great’s army burned it to the ground on conquering it around 330 BC. However, some of the sculptures are covered in English-language graffiti from the previous two centuries.

This 1912 carving is from the British Calvary (39th King George’s Own Central India Horse).

Here’s something from 1810 by S.R. Willock, another representative of the Crown.

Defacing like this can’t be undone. A treasure is preserved until it isn’t. Once it is gone it is gone forever.

It reminded me of the office library at the river forecasting agency I used to work at (NRCS). They have a set of papers nicknamed “The Ancient Scrolls” and they are kept in a special metal bookshelf with a glass door. Some of these are fragile original manuscripts from the pioneers of water supply forecasting, written before the 1940s, some as far back as the 1890s. Even more remarkable is a wall of books containing the complete print archive of the agency’s published forecasts. Many of these documents were marked up in the margins with the original handwriting of the Great Masters like George Clyde, Arch Work or Ralph Parshall (ever hear of a “Parshall flume”?).

My supervisor Phil Pasteris recounted a story that when he was a junior employee, he was ordered to put the papers in the trash because there wasn’t going to be room after the office moved to a new building. Recognizing the value in these things, Phil stashed the documents in unmarked boxes. Shortly after the move, his supervisor retired (“he was a short-timer, anyway”) and Phil brought the old forecasts out of hiding to where they remain today.

When I excitedly showed an old university classmate some of these documents, she instantly understood what she was looking at. Gently handling one of the earliest forecasts issued (in Nevada around 1910), she marveled that “one person could grab this and walk out the door and it would be gone forever. It’s amazing that these things have stayed intact for nearly a hundred years.” We stood in silence for a bit, but then reverently returned the book back to the shelf.

These are just old forecasts and manuscripts however. Do you know what the real national treasures are? Long-term environmental monitoring stations and their data. The NRCS library has a large collection of annual summaries of USGS streamflow records. The summaries are now digital, but recently each of the 50 states would publish volumes with tables of numbers, each as thick as a phone book. The whole US for a single year could take up an entire shelf. However, back in the late 1800s, there were so few stations that the entire country’s streamflow measurements could fit in a single book as compact as your hand.

One day I tried to find the earliest volume of streamflow data in the NRCS’s library. On the inside cover of this book, I was surprised to find a library card of those that had borrowed the volume before me. Some of those names included Tom Maddox Jr (a name that goes deep in the history of the Colorado River…Tom Maddox III, his son, is also a world-famous hydrologist) and Luna Leopold (another famous hydrologist and son of the author of A Sand County Almanac, which is nearly as influential as Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring). The book I held was a one-of-a-kind artifact. I checked to make sure the back page wasn’t signed by Joe DiMaggio.

Some of the stations in that original book are still recording data today. Yet every year the USGS struggles to renew funding to maintain its sites. When the money runs out (maybe because of a budget shortfall in local government), the site must be discontinued and there is an unrecoverable gap in the continuous climate record. The list of threatened and endangered stations that die each year is much longer than the list of those rescued.

It’s the same all over the world, this post describes the breaks in climate records in 100+ year old stations in Iran, or the movement of the oldest station in Nepal. There only needs to be one weak link the chain, someone briefly giving up his duty to protect, neglecting his obligation to past and future generations, for things to be irreparably ruined.

This obligation includes old books in the library and Wonders of the World. 

It is for environmental data, and for the environment itself.

Jafar and I with Persepolis’ Griffin, the mythical guardian of priceless treasures.