Landscape Checkers in Washington State

Doing some map exercises toady I came across some checkerboard landscapes. I have seen checkerboard forestry before, but this great example which showed up on my screen after punching in coordinates that had me a bit east of where I was actually wanting to look. 

Checkerboard Forestry

Earlier in the day I was looking at a 1918 topographic map of the Connell area in eastern Washington and noted numerous schools denoted on the map (you will likely need to click the map and expand to see the school denotations). This is an area I am familiar with and it seemed impossible that there could ever been that many schools even if more workers were once required to plant and harvest wheat. This is fairly empty country and at the time Connell had only 400 people. The school denotations are school trust lands granted to Washington State by the federal government at the time of statehood to support schools. Most of these parcels are still owned by Washington State and are managed by the Department of Natural Resources under the Public Lands Commissioner. The lands are generally leased as farm land as wheat or on rockier areas grazing.

School checkerboard, Connell Topographic Map, 1918

Flattery Rocks, Berthold Seemann, Before GPS

I have been looking into the history of national wildlife refuges in Washington State. One refuge, Flattery Rocks is located along the far northwest coast of the Olympic Peninsula. This refuge was created by Executive Order of President Roosevelt in 1907.

Flattery Rocks as well as nearby Tatoosh Island were described in Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Herald by Berthold Seemann in 1853. Seemann wrote a very compelling narrative that is very hard to leave off once started. And he provides a wonderful set of descriptions of the people and places along the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the late 1840s.

I very much enjoyed his initial descriptions of Flattery Rocks that included an astute recognition of a significant technical advance of the era in which he lived. "At daylight on the 24th (June) we found ourselves off Cape Flattery rocks; and thus, after seventy days passage without seeing land, was our voyage concluded; yet, thanks to our admirable chronometers, we made the land within a mile, - a nicety of calculation which in these days is not much to boast of, being performed by three-fourths of the vessels of England and America, as well as France and Holland; but looking back thirty or forty years, the change is immense."

Something to think about with our admirable GPS units and Google Earth maps. 

An Old Habit Kicks In: Looking for Pressure-Temperature Indicators

Granitic intrusions into schist/gneiss

Granite and schist/gneiss cliffs

Typical granite on our traverse

I was recently traversing across an area with intruded sheets of granite into schist and gneiss. Looking at these rocks was not my intended purpose, but I found myself looking for aluminum silicates Al2SiO5 in the schist - andalusite, kyanite or sillimanite. I kept bending down and peering at the schists intently for the the classic cross patern of andalusite. Or better yet, small andalusites psuedomorphed into kyanite and/or sillimanite. These three minerals form under different pressure and temperature regimes with anadlusite being the lower temperature and pressure member, kyanite the high pressure member and sillimanite the high temperature member.

Identifying any of the three can give one a rough idea as to the pressure and temperature of the metamorphosed rock. And if you can identify the shape of one mineral such as the small crosses andalusite forms being replaced by say kyanite you can get an idea of the pressure/temperature path of metamorphism.

I spent two field seasons looking at schists adjacent to plutons and batholiths in the North Cascades and British Columbia Coast Range with the goal of figuring out the depth of the pluton emplacement and the subsequent metamorphic events after emplacement of the plutons. I was struck by how my old metamorphic habits so automatically took over without even thinking about what I was doing.

Oil Boom in Western North Dakota

Besides coal mining in the Williston Basin powder-river-basin-and-williston-basin-coal there has been a significant oil and gas boom in the basin. The oil and gas boom is exceeding the capacity of the transportation system with some proven oil fields sitting idle due to lack of pipe line and rail capacity to ship the oil. The small towns of western North Dakota are being over run with truckers, drillers and geologists.

Oil well and gas field, western North Dakota

Drill rig in western North Dakota

The exploration and drilling programs are tapping into the Bakken Formation at the base of the Mississippian within a much deeper and older part of the Williston Basin than the Fort Union Formation coal seams. In western North Dakota and eastern Montana as well as to the north in Saskatchewan the formation is deep enough to have been cooked just right to produce oil. Oil has been known to be present in the Bakken since the 1950s but drilling technical advances as well as fracturing advances have turned this patch of North America into an oil boom that keeps getting bigger with pronounced oil and gas reserves growing every few months.

Powder River Basin and Williston Basin Coal

Powder River coal has been very much in the news in Washington State with proposed coal shipping terminals at Cherry Point in northwest Washington and at Longview, Washington on the Columbia River in southwest Washington. Another site has been floated for shipping out of Grays Harbor. The Powder River Basin is an active coal mining area on the high plains of Montana and Wyoming. Development of rail spurs in the basin to main transcontinental rail lines to the north and south now allow transport of the coal to markets to the south and east and more recently to the Pacific coast for overseas shipping to China. Currently Powder River Basin coal is being shipped to a coal terminal on the southwest coast of British Columbia just north of the U.S.-Canada border. Coal from the Powder River Basin also supplies electric power plants in Texas and Colorado..

The Powder River Basin is one of several northern plains geologic basins that preserve coal beds from a time when what is now the high plains was covered by shallow seas and broad warm coastal plains. The initial basin formation formed significant oil and gas deposits and later basin development in the same basins by down warping roughly 50 million years ago formed extensive coal deposits. The broad geologic basins that formed these deposits do not necessarily correlate with existing drainage basins. For example, when a geologist says the Powder River Basin, the geologist is referring to the geologic basin that allowed the formation of the extensive coal beds. The geologic Powder River Basin is much larger than the current Powder River watershed basin.

The formation that contains the coal beds in the Powder River Basin, the Fort Union Formation, extends into other geologic basins including the Williston Basin in the Dakotas, Montana and Saskatchewan. When the Lewis and Clark Expedition made their way up the Missouri River and into what is now termed the Williston Basin (geologic basin) they noted coal was present on the bluffs of the Missouri River in present day western North Dakota. Early settlers utilized the deposit as a fuel for heating and mined the deposit along the bluffs at near present day Pick City located along the Missouri River.

Coal seam along bluff above the Missouri River Sakawea Reservoir above Garrison Dam

I recently visited the Williston Basin. To the east and west of the coal seam pictured above there are a number of thicker coal seams and these seams are mined on both sides of the river using strip mining techniques. Overburden of rock and soil is removed and the coal is then mined using huge drag lines. The over burden of non coal rocks and soil is not very thick in this area. The shallow coal in the Williston Basin is lignite. It is within the same formation, the Fort Union Formation, as the coal in the Powder River Basin, but is higher in the formation than the units mined in the Powder River Basin. The coal seams in the upper Fort Union Formation are lignite and contain about 25% less energy than the Powder River Basin coals. Lignite has low energy content and is typically used very near the mine as it is not efficient to transport low energy fuel. In the case of the western North Dakota coal mines, the coal is utilized in electric power plants very near the mines.

Basic large equipment at the Falkirk Mining Company Mine east of Underwood, North Dakota

Coal on the way to power plant

Coal fired power plant near lignite mines

Coal fired power plant on the lower Yellowstone River

Falkirk Mines and power plant east of the Missouri River, North Dakota

Coteau Mines and power plant west and south of Missouri River, North Dakota

The Fort Union Formation in the Powder River Basin is subbituminous coal. Still not particularly high energy content, but high enough that at least at present the energy costs of transport are low enough that Fort Union Formation coal from the Powder River will make money for mining companies, railroads and electric generators. Some of the coal seams in the Powder River Basin are greater than 100 feet thick. Hence, for seams relatively near the surface, mining can be be a very efficient operation.

Although the Fort Union Formation in both the Powder River and Williston Basins has relatively low energy content, the sulphur content is low compared to many other coal formations. The low sulphur content makes up for the low energy content as energy loss for sulphur scrubbing and power plant costs are reduced. The Powder River Basin coal has just enough energy content combined with the low sulphur content to make it worth mining, transporting long distance and burning for power at least at current energy prices. Such is not the case with the even lower energy content coal in the Williston Basin. Shipping the Williston Coal is very unlikely, but then the same once was true of Powder River low energy coal. The coals of the Powder River and Williston basin are considered clean coal, but still emit just as much carbon dioxide when burned as higher sulphur coals.  

The combination of low sulphur, thick coal seams, and new rail spurs in part aided by government funding and allowance for railroads to easily condemn private land in Montana has led to recent rail impacts in Washington State and the potential for a new large export facility on the Washington coast. Coal politics has arrived in Washington State. coal-terminals-in-washington-state, coal-terminal-preemptive-strike, cherry-point-coal-terminal-updatel, coal-politics-comes-to-washington

Notes on the Northern Plains - High Waters

Not exactly a Washington State landscape, but after lots of time on the northern plains I do have a few observations to note.  

Substantial flooding has impacted North Dakota this year as well as over the past few years. The Missouri River, Red River and Souris River have all flooded this year. Floods last a long time on these slow moving rivers. At Sioux City, Iowa on the Missouri River flooding was still taking place a month after the area initially flooded. At Garrison Dam in North Dakota, the Army Corp of Engineers opened the spill way gates for the first time since the dam was completed in the 1950s. 

     

By the time I arrived at the Garrison Dan the spillway had been closed but the flow of water through the hydroelectric power plant at the dam was still very high.

Spillway at garrison Dam on the Missouri River

The spillway was opened for the first time ever in 2011 after nearly 60 years since the dam was completed

Outfall at the hydroelectric power plant on Garrison Dam on the Missouri River, North Dakota

More than rivers are flooding in North Dakota. Many areas of North Dakota have closed basin lakes formed during the last glacial period. Devil's Lake has been rising for several years slowly flooding homes and farm land and has only been checked with the construction of a very costly drainage project. Of note is that Devil's Lake was previously higher and appears to be returning to previous levels after several years of wetter weather.   

Numerous smaller lakes have been expanding as well causing flooding of roads and highways that traverse across these shallow lakes. The road grades across several lakes has required fill to elevate the road way.

Approach to lake crossing on Highway 200

Lake waters lapping up to edge of road. The road level was raised above the water level with gravel fill.

Tomato Tips for September in Western Washington

Growing tomatoes in western Washington is a vegetable garden challenge that many give up on or simply try repeatedly and fail. In Bellingham, my town, it is perhaps a bit harder than most but not all western Washington sites. 80 degree weather is uncommon and 90 degree weather is flirting with records.

This year has been a particularly challenging year because it was so cold deep into Spring and stayed cool well into July. But the second half of August brought steady sun. I missed a large part of August, but upon returning I have been harvesting a bowl full of tomatoes every day. And it appears we will be getting some exceptional September warm weather this next week so lots of ripening days and lots of tasty fresh tomatoes ahead. The delayed corn should ripen as well during this stretch. My tomato patch  is planted in a hot spot in our small yard at the top of a rock retaining wall above the alley. It is a spot that is sunny almost all day, residual heat from the rock wall and cement alley maintains the warmer temperatures well into the night, cool air can not pool around the plants, and the soil is well drained and does not get heavy and wet. Hence, I get tomatoes every year.

However, even with some tomatoes they tend to come pretty late and it is frustrating when September arrives with much shorter days and rapidly cooling day time and night time temperatures and the tomatoes never ripen. With the long cooler nights, dew becomes an enemy and fungus begins to attack the plants.

I do two things in September to maximize my cherished tomatoes. Once the night temperatures start dipping below 50 I put a tarp over the plants in the evening to prevent dew from forming. I watch the weather carefully and when the first significant rain is predicted I pull all of the plants out and hang them upside down under the eaves and out of the rain. The tomatoes will continue to ripen well into October as long as they are kept dry to prevent fungus. Of course bring the plants inside to a sunny room will work to but it is a bit messy. My best tomato fall was the year Lisa was working out of town and I hung the lines in her studio. We picked tomatoes all the way till thanksgiving that year.