Mather Mountain Party in Sequoia National Park, 1915.

April 22^nd through April 28^th is National Park Week. It’s a celebration of the more than 400 national parks in the U.S., including canyons, forests, beaches, historic houses and battlefields.  While National Geographic can’t take any credit for these spectacular places, we do take a certain amount of pride in our long-standing connection to the national parks, a connection that stretches back all the way to the 1800s – before either the National Geographic Society or the National Park Service even existed.

When Yellowstone, the first national park, was created in 1872, it would still be another 16 years before the National Geographic Society was founded.  But our founders-to-be were already hard at work exploring the wild places that would later become park lands and visited by millions of Americans.  John Wesley Powell, Almon F. Thompson, and Clarence Dutton were among the first to systematically explore the Grand Canyon, Zion and Bryce Canyon National Park areas.  Lieutenant Rogers Birnie was the first to find a passable route over what became Death Valley National Park.  Israel Russell led the first expedition to the area now part of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park; and Robert Muldrow would be the first to measure the height of Mt. MicKinley, North America’s highest summit and the central feature of Denali National Park.

But despite these associations, the relationship between the young Society and the national parks did not blossom until National Geographic editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor published an article on them in the June 1912 issue of the magazine. During this time, he and Franklin K. Lane, the head of the Interior Department, began informally discussing ways to build up the nation’s fledgling national park system. But it remained for a third man, Stephen Mather, to finish what these two had begun.

Stephen Mather’s stewardship of the National Park Service started with angry letter in 1915.  A self-made millionaire, now retired, Mather was so appalled by the deplorable conditions he discovered on a visit to one of the national parks that he wrote to Secretary Lane requesting that something be done.

Lane fired back:  “If you don’t like the way the parks are run, why don’t you come to Washington and run them yourself?”  It was a challenge, and Mather took him up on it.

One of Mather’s first goals was to stimulate interest in the parks, so he arranged a two-week pack trip into the Sierra Nevada in California and invited influential writers, reporters, and businessmen to see first-hand the great beauty of Sequoia National Park and surrounding areas.

Gilbert H. Grosvenor snapped this photo of people ringing a giant sequoia.

The “Mather Mountain Party” as it would later be called, did not exactly rough it.  Pack mules carried their gear and the men slept on air mattresses beneath the stars and the enormous leafy canopies of the Giant Trees. Most importantly, they enjoyed the services of Ty Sing, a famous trail cook. One member of the party admitted to polishing off a breakfast of “a grapefruit, a cantaloupe, a few trout, two tenderloin steaks, potatoes, hot biscuits, and coffee.” Another memorable dinner on linen-covered folding tables included “soup, salad, fried chicken, venison and gravy, potatoes, hot rolls, apple pie, cheese, and English plum pudding with brandy sauce.”

As it so happened, the Mather party included Geographic’s Grosvenor, who, despite being an experienced international traveler, had never traveled west of Ohio.  He was enthralled by everything he saw and became one of Mather’s staunchest supporters. Grosvenor devoted the contents of the entire April 1916 National Geographic — called the “Land of the Best” — to America’s scenic wonders, exhorting his fellow citizens to appreciate their parks and to support an agency to run them.  Every congressman received a copy while legislation to create a park service was pending. Grosvenor even helped draft that legislation’s wording and lobbied for its passage.

But that wasn’t all. Grosvenor also convinced the Society’s Board of Managers to take $20,000 from the 1916 Research Fund and give it to the newly-founded National Park Service.  The grant allowed the Park Service to purchase a portion of the forests that now make up Sequoia National Park from private landowners, thereby ensuring that they would remain protected.  In a show of appreciation for the gift, a 2400-acre tract of the park was dedicated as “The National Geographic Grove.”

Ever since those early days, the Society has maintained its abiding interest in the national parks, with scores of articles appearing in National Geographic. The entire July 1979 issue, “The Best Idea America Ever Had,” was a tribute to the National Park Service’s 75th anniversary.  And, as befits an organization with the world as its subject, the National Geographic Society has also become concerned with national parks in other countries. In 1967 the Society helped establish Gombe Stream National Park where Jane Goodall carried out her pioneering studies of chimpanzees.

In 2002, publicity from Explorer–in-Residence Mike Fay’s National Geographic-Wildlife Conservation Society Megatransect Field Expedition, helped persuade the government of Gabon to establish that country’s national park system. Nearly 10% of Gabon was set aside for protection.

Most recently, teams of scientists, naturalists, kids, and volunteers have been gearing up once a year for the BioBlitz – a 24-hour, all-out inventory of the plant and animal species in national parks. This year’s BioBlitz will start on May 17^th at the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve in Louisiana. (You can find information on registering here.) The BioBlitzes, our latest joint venture with the national parks, will continue annually until the Park Service’s centennial in 2016.

Even if you can’t make it to Louisiana, you can celebrate National Parks week closer to home.  From now until April 26^th, entrance to all National Parks is free.

Scientists at the Hamamatsu University School of Medicine in Japan have come up with a special kind of spacesuit that can help keep insects alive in a vacuum.  Unlike the gear astronauts wear, the nano-suit — as scientists are calling it — is more than 1,000 times thinner than a human hair, and it’s made using electrons.

How did they do it?  Researchers first tried out the technique on Drosophila larvae (the species commonly known as the fruit fly), which are coated in a thin film composed of extracellular substances (ECS).  When scientists bombarded the larvae with electrons they found that the ECS fused together into a polymer barrier that was between 50 and 100 nanometers thick. The barrier acted as protection, holding in moisture and gases, while still allowing the larvae to move around.  While specimens that were not protected by the polymer barrier quickly shriveled up and died, larvae coated in the nano-suits survived up to 60 minutes in the vacuum.  Once they were removed from the vacuum, they proceeded to develop normally, with seemingly no ill effects.

The scientists were able to get the technique to work on other kinds of insect larvae as well, including mosquitoes, ants and flatworms.  Since these insects lack the ECM that fruit flies have, scientists coated them with Tween 20 – a non-toxic compound that can be found in a number of products including detergents and candy – before they exposed them to the electron stream.   (For more details about the experiment, you can read the paper, which was published in the Proceedings of the Natural Academy of Scientists.)

This clever discovery came about not as part of a plan to send fruit flies into space, but as a way to help researchers make images of tiny organisms.  In order to examine a fruit fly’s proboscis, say, or its cells, scientists need to use a scanning electron microscope, which works by using a vacuum.  The microscope allows researchers to view specimens at a high resolution, but it has two serious disadvantages.  The first is that the vacuum kills living organisms quickly by sucking all the moisture out of them.  The second is that this extreme dehydration causes the bodies of specimens to desiccate and crumple up, making it difficult for scientists to determine what they looked like in their original state.

And the research has sparked interest among certain astrobiologists.  Lynn Rothschild at NASA’s Ames Research Center called the find “exciting” and said the find could have applications for future space travel.  Although astronauts won’t be trading in their spacesuits any time soon.

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

Each spring, as the Japanese cherry trees bloom in Potomac Park and around the Tidal Basin, something tugs at our memories. Didn’t the National Geographic Society have something to do with getting those trees here? Wasn’t Eliza Scidmore, the first woman on our board of trustees, somehow involved?

The Society itself had little to do with establishing the flowering cherries in Washington. But Eliza Scidmore did, and she was joined by two other prominent Washingtonians – including First Lady Helen Taft – who were also closely associated with the Society. Here is their story.

The “Most Beautiful Thing in the World…”

In 1885, when Scidmore – an adventurous journalist who was still in her twenties – made her first trip to Japan, she experienced something like rapture. April had arrived there, bringing the sakura, the flowering cherry trees, to full bloom, and wherever she went, she was swept up in the spectacle. In Washington, her home between travels, flowering cherries stood here and there in the shady streets and squares. But the American capital was nothing like Japan, where, as she later wrote, “…vistas of flowery trees, lofty and wide-spreading as vast oaks and elms, and through their snowy branches shine thousands of other snowy branches.”

After returning to Washington, Scidmore could not help but recall those cherry blossoms when confronted by the mudfields on the Potomac. The river in those days nearly lapped at the foot of the Washington Monument, and civic authorities were engaged in a decades-long project to drain the malarial swamps, reclaim the marshes, and channel the tides into a tidal basin. But the new land being created was raw and ugly.  In Scidmore’s opinion, as she showed her photographs of blossoming cherries to impatient officials, those “dump heaps” might as well be covered with the most beautiful thing in the world as with anything else.

But year after year, Scidmore’s pitch for the cherry trees continued to fall on deaf ears.  With each change of administration she made the same approach and got the same response. “Cherry trees?” one official exclaimed. “Boys would climb the trees and get the cherries and break all the branches!” When he was informed that these trees did not bear edible fruit, he responded: “What! No cherries! What good is that sort of cherry tree!”

Eventually Scidmore’s attention turned to other things.   In 1890 she joined the newly-formed National Geographic Society. Friendly with the Society’s leading families, the Hubbards and the Bells, she grew active in the organization, becoming the only woman on its board of managers while contributing articles, photographs, and editing expertise to its small journal, the National Geographic magazine— that is, when she wasn’t busy traveling and writing books. Taking time for leisure was never Eliza Scidmore’s strong suit.

Meanwhile, around the turn of the century, a new effort was undertaken to “beautify” the National Capital. Congress soon designated the raw, reclaimed land along the river as the new Potomac Park. Many possibilities were put forward as to its development and use including bathing beaches, polo grounds, bridle paths, and bicycle tracks.  Someone proposed a long perimeter road called a “Speedway” for horseless carriages to chug around. When fully developed and linked up with the Mall and Rock Creek Park, the whole ensemble should rival anything the capitals of Europe might offer.

There seemed little room for flowering cherry trees.

A New Champion for the Cherry Trees

But Scidmore’s cause was about to get a new champion, one with some serious clout:  Helen Taft, or “Nellie” as she was known, the wife of William Howard Taft, president of the United States.

Nellie Taft was a commanding figure. Accomplished, intelligent, and well-traveled, Taft had used her energy and ambition into helping her husband become President.  With that goal achieved, Taft threw her considerable energies into redecorating the White House and making Washington more beautiful.

Scidmore knew Taft from the Far East circuit and probably from soirées at the Bells as well. She knew that the First Lady had loved the flowering cherries of Japan. So one Saturday morning in April of 1909 she wrote the First Lady a note soliciting her help in establishing in Potomac Park a sakura-michi, or “cherry trail” like the one in Tokyo’s Mukojima Park, lined for two miles with rows of the splendid trees.

The First Lady replied enthusiastically.  Suddenly, after years of delay, things were beginning to fall into place. Dr. Jokichi Takamine, a noted Japanese chemist, happened to be visiting Washington.  When he heard of the plan, he generously offered to personally donate 2,000 trees from his homeland.  Then the mayor of Tokyo stepped in and offered the trees in the name of his great city “to show its friendly sentiments towards its sister Capital City.” Newspapers got hold of the story, and the U.S. Secretary of State met with the Japanese Ambassador to discuss the significance of such a gift.

A Diplomatic Fiasco

Toward the end of year, 2,000 fairly large cherry trees were uprooted from around Tokyo, loaded onto a freighter, and shipped across the Pacific to Seattle.  The trees arrived in Washington in January 1910. But when quarantine authorities opened the crates and peered inside, they found that the trees were full of fungus and insect pests. Not long afterward, all the trees were burned.

David Fairchild was mortified.  As head of the Agriculture Department’s new Office of Plant Introduction, he had worked with Scidmore, lobbying for the cherry trees, and painstakingly coordinating their delivery.  He knew that the trees had been too large, the roots cut too close, and they likely would not have survived, but it was horrifying to see his efforts go up in flames. The Japanese perception of insult was finely calibrated, and the mayor of Tokyo reportedly made the sarcastic quip, “Oh, I believe your first president set the example of destroying cherry trees, didn’t he?” It was an inauspicious start for the proposed sakura-michi.

Diplomatic regrets were tendered, embarrassments smoothed over, and on February 2, 1912, the mayor of Tokyo wrote to Washington’s park superintendent, announcing he was sending another 3,000 cherry trees. It gave him, he stated, “boundless pleasure to think that [they] may in a measure add to the embellishment of your magnificent capital.” Over a year had gone into their selection and care.

The trees arrived in Washington on March 26. They passed through quarantine and the very next day a small group assembled in West Potomac Park for a quiet tree planting ceremony. The Japanese Ambassador and his wife were joined by the Washington parks’ superintendent and Miss Eliza Scidmore. In their midst, wrapped against the spring chill, stood Nellie Taft. She was still recovering from a stroke, but she was able to plant the first sapling herself. In the ensuing weeks, the rest of the cherries were set around the Tidal Basin, along Potomac Drive (the renamed Speedway, now Independence Avenue), on the White House grounds, and in other parts of the city.

Rites of Spring

By the spring of 1915 the small trees, wreathed in bloom, were breathtaking. All Washington was turning out to see them, the newspapers exclaimed. Potomac Drive, it was soon said, was the capital’s equivalent of the Champs Elysée.

With each returning spring the trees blossomed anew. Yet Eliza Scidmore never saw them in their mature glory.  By that point, she was spending most of her time abroad, and after 1924, when Congress passed a law banning Japanese immigration, she quit the U.S. for good and moved to Geneva, where she lived out her declining years, dying on November 3, 1928. Her ashes were interred on a cherry-crowned bluff, called the Foreigners Cemetery, in Yokohama.

The Lincoln Memorial rises above the Cherry Blossom-lined tidal basin, 1922.

By then a contented William Howard Taft had become Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. At least four times a year he heaved his happy bulk up the front steps of the National Geographic Society to attend board meetings, where he might greet his fellow trustee, the gray and increasingly stooped David Fairchild. Taft wrote articles for National Geographic magazine, 13 in all. He sat for photographic portraits, looking large and benign while beside him Nellie stood frail, white-haired, and defiant. Each spring, if she chanced to be away, he faithfully reported on the blooming of her beloved cherry trees.

Taft passed away in March 1930, but Nellie lived for another 13 years, dying in the spring of 1943 – just long enough to see the blossoms come and go one final time.  No doubt she would have been pleased to know that her cherry trees have become a rite of spring for us Washingtonians – more than 100 years after she planted that first sapling.

Bumblebees may not have the large, highly-developed brains that certain other animals possess – us extremely intelligent primates, for example – but they can perform surprisingly sophisticated tasks, like using logic and picking up cues from their fellow bees.  Scientists at the Zoological Society of London have been examining social learning in bees and they have published their findings in the journal Current Biology.

As part of their experiment, the researchers placed a number of artificial flowers in “flight arenas”.  Blossoms of one particular color had been baited with nectar.  The scientists then released a group of bees into the arena while another group of bees was placed on one side of a screen so they could observe as their fellow bees collected nectar from the fake flowers.

Later, the observer bees were released into an arena so they could obtain their own nectar.  Bees in the second group repeatedly chose flowers the same color as those they had seen chosen by the first group, unlike a group of “naïve foragers” – bees who had not watched the first group.

However, bees that been previously trained to associate the popular flower color with quinine (a substance that bees dislike) disregarded their fellow bee’s preference, opting for other flowers instead.  Just an example of how sometimes being smart means following your gut.

 For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

Photo by Buck Lovell.

Those of us who live in urban areas can get so accustomed to noise that we barely notice it.  But it’s a fact: cities are loud.  All that noise can have a deleterious effect on our lives, making it harder to sleep, relax, and stay focused.  Humans aren’t the only ones negatively impacted by urban noise though.  Scientists in Canada recently released a study linking high levels of anthropogenic noise to a decline in the diversity of city songbirds.

Researchers looked at seven species of songbirds at more than 100 sites in and around the city of Edmonton.  After accounting for factors such as vegetation and food sources, the team reviewed their data and discovered a correlation:  the higher the levels of noise, the fewer the species of songbirds.

Birds that sing at lower frequencies are particularly affected.  That’s because a great deal of urban noise comes from traffic – another low-frequency noise.  The competing sounds can interfere with female songbirds’ ability to hear the songs of male birds, thereby interrupting the mating process.  The result, not surprisingly, is fewer offspring.

All this goes to show that creating green spaces for songbirds might not be enough to help them thrive in our cities.  We may need to spend more time making quiet spaces as well.  It would probably be good for all of us.

 For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

Trends in forest canopy green cover over the eastern United States from 2000 to 2010 derived from NASA MODIS satellite sensor data. Green shades indicate a positive trend of increasing growing season green cover, whereas brown shades indicate a negative trend of decreasing growing season green cover. Image Credit: NASA

Forests in the eastern United States have become less green over the past decade.  That’s what scientists at NASA have concluded after analyzing a series of satellite images compiled between 2000 and 2010.  The scientists reviewed monthly images taken by NASA’s Terra satellite in four regions – the Upper Great Lakes, southern Appalachian, mid-Atlantic, and southeastern Coastal Plain – and found a significant decline in forest canopy cover.

The culprits?  Rising temperatures, changes in local and regional precipitation, and stressors that include insect pest outbreaks and the introduction of new pathogens.

In the past, researchers have had to rely on small-scale field site measurements, which made it difficult to understand widespread changes in forest growth.  But thanks to new technology that has allowed them to compile a decade of “baseline” data, they are developing a much clearer picture of how climate change is affecting these regions.

“This comprehensive data set gave us the evidence to conclude that a series of relatively dry years since 2000 has been unfavorable for vigorous growth of forest cover over much of the eastern U. S. this past decade,” said Christopher Potter, a research scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center, who wrote a paper on the findings.  He says further research will be done to study the areas most affected by drought.

 For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

The rock hyrax is a sociable, furry mammal about the size of a guinea pig that can be found in Africa and Asia where it makes its nest in rock fissures.  What can this animal – or, more specifically, its pee – tell us about climate change?  More than you might think.  Thanks to the hyraxes’ habit of sticking close to home, living, eating, and, yes, urinating, in the same places where generations of rock hyraxes have urinated before them, their nests contain a wealth of information about long-term changes in the local environment.

The information can go back quite a ways.  Scientists have discovered hyrax urine samples that have been building up for as long as 55,000 years.  “Hyraxes use the same place to pee every day,” Brian M. Chase told the Guardian.  Chase works at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in France and is leading the hyrax project.  ”The crucial point is that hyrax urine – which is thick and viscous and dries quickly – contains pollen, bits of leaves, grasses, and gas bubbles that provide a clear picture of the climate at the time.”

As unappealing as it may sound, this picture is extremely useful to scientists.  Southern Africa is a sensitive region and knowledge about long-term environmental change there remains scarce.  Data collected from these urine samples may fill in some crucial gaps, and help researchers make better predictions about how the area may be affected by climate change in the future.

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

Bacteria with the ability to change ions into solid gold?  This scenario may sound like a biochemist’s version of a fairy tale, but it’s real and scientists at McMaster University have just described how the process works in a recent article published online in the journal Nature Chemical Biology.  

The bacteria is called Delftia acidovorans, and it turns out that its King Midas-like conversion is part of a self-defense mechanism. Gold ions dissolved in water are toxic, so when the bacteria senses them it releases a protein called delftibactin A.  The protein acts as a shield for the bacteria and changes the poisonous ions into harmless particles that accumulate outside the cells.

Although the amount of gold that Delftia acidovorans release is tiny (the particles are 25-50 nanometers across) it’s possible that the bacteria or the protein could someday be used to dissolve gold from water or to help people identify streams and rivers carrying the mineral.

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

Air pollution.  Light pollution.  Radical changes to local ecosystems.  The profound environmental impact of cities is a popular topic among scientists these days.  Now it appears that cities may actually be changing the weather — and the effects are being felt not just in urban areas, but in places thousands of miles away from major metropolises.

As part of a recent study, researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Center for Atmospheric Research examined global patterns in energy consumption.  They have concluded that the concentrated levels of “anthropogenic heating” that occur in urban areas — heat created by transportation, heating and cooling systems, and other human activities — may be altering the jet stream and other major atmospheric systems and changing weather patterns by causing warming in some areas and other cooling in others.  These changes appear to be most pronounced along the east and west coasts of the North American and Eurasian continents, which are “underneath the most prominent atmospheric circulation troughs and ridges,” according to study author Ming Cai.

The findings may explain why some areas have higher levels of winter warming than others and help scientists adjust models to make better predictions about future climate change.   In the meantime, it serves as yet another reminder of just how connected we are — no matter where we live.

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.

Photo by Frank Kazukaitis

What do the members of the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics discuss during their annual meetings?  Math, usually.  Lots of math.  But this week they’ll also be talking about something a little different: penguins.

That’s because mathematician Francois Blanchette will be presenting a paper that examines fluid dynamics in relation to the behavior of penguin huddles.  Blanchette, who was inspired to look into the topic after watching National Geographic’s documentary March of the Penguins, became interested in how groups of penguins move during their efforts to stay warm in Antarctica’s bitterly cold conditions.  So he and his colleagues created a model that mimics how birds exposed to the wind move constantly toward the most sheltered location inside of the group.  Once variables such as the changing direction of wind currents and the differences in the size and hardiness of different birds had been factored in to the equations, the researchers discovered that their shifting model began to form and behave just like a real-life penguin huddle.

With the model in place, Blanchette and his team reviewed the resulting data and found some interesting results.  It turns out that huddle movement caused by the selfish behavior of individual birds (each one jockeying for the warmest position) ends up distributing heat throughout the group and leads to benefits for everyone.  “Even if penguins are only selfish, only trying to find the best spot for themselves and not thinking about their community, there is still equality in the amount of time that each penguin spends exposed to the wind,” Blanchette said.

Similar models could be used to figure out how other groups of organisms, such as bacteria, respond to toxins or stimuli in their environments.   Blanchette also hopes the study will help people develop a new appreciation for his field.  “Nearly everybody seems to love penguins and not enough people love math,” he says. “If we use math to study penguins we could potentially teach more people to love math too!”

For all the latest science news, check out our twice-weekly news rundown, Earth Current.