Dune Grass II

Dune Grass II

The once and future dunes. This photo represents the past, present, and future of the dunes. On one hand, the sand under my feet is accreted land dominated by European Beach Grass and just a few beach pine. Yet to the right is the future, that of a beach that has a forest close by the sea.


While this may be the present view on the beach, it by no means represents the likely future. The relentless evergreens, the beach pine and sitka spruce will eventually dominate and once again reclaim their rightful place in beach evolution. This will set up an epic battle between the land and sea.

Ok..let us start at the beginning and there is no better place to start than the beach circa 1900. At that time, the dominant dune grass growing on the Long Beach Peninsula was American Dune Grass and suffice to say, while it was the primary dune grass, it wasn't as dominant as present day dune grass.



This aerial photo was taken in 1926 and is looking north from present day Long Beach towards Cranberry Road. The North Jetty had been in place about 10 years and there is a pretty clean sandy beach plain without much dune grass.

After construction of the South and North Jetty and the subsequent channelization of the entrance channel of the Columbia River, the future maintenance of the channel became a matter of importance. The Clatsop Plain was a sandy and open plain spit. Someone noticed that sand was constantly blowing from the sandy plain to the Columbia River and in an effort to halt that sand movement, European Beach Grass was planted by the Soil Conservation Service. The time of this planting was post WWII as I recall reading (and I apologize not having the source documents to quote).

European Beach Grass is a much more vigorous colonizing grass than the native species and it quickly gained a foot hold on the Clatsop Plain and then spread north across the Columbia and towards Long Beach and on up the Washington Coast. The accreted lands of the North Beach Peninsula provided fertile ground for grass, thus the immense grassy swards out in front of Seaview and north were and are today dominated today by European Beach Grass by possibly 95% with the remainder the original American Beach Grass.

At first, it wasn't that dominant. This 1950 aerial photo is in front of present day Long Beach and there are patches of dune grass here and there but the sandy plain is quite dominant. The North Jetty has been in place a tad over 3 decades and it doesn't look like the dune grass (probably European) is getting a super foot hold but it is appearing.

These grassy fields or swards or I should say, the nature of them, is note known for prehistorical times. In an effort to figure out what the beach might have looked like I thought back to the late 1950's and 1960's when I was growing up in Ocean Park.

The dune area between the primary dune and back dune was a mixture of sand and beach grass, mostly beach grass with low open sandy areas that were dry in the summer and water filled in the winter. No pine trees at all. I can recall riding in the families '56 Ford Ranch Wagon and as we were headed south on SR 103 (affectionately known as the "front road" back then), I could easily see the breakers of the ocean..say in the vicinity Tides West. Hard to believe now. However, it is likely that most of the dune grass I was looking at was dominated by the European variety. And off course, few if any pine trees or spruce blocked the view.

As I grew older and armed with a lot of questions, I wondered what the original beach might have looked like. Several images kept returning to my mind. One was of the Vancouver Island outer coast. In 1983 I ocean kayaked from Tofino to Hot Springs Cove and noticed how narrow the "dune" environment was on Flores Island and Vargas island. The "dune" was narrow in many places, perhaps only 50 to 100 feet in width and then salal and more brushy vegetation took over and that was immediately adjacent to Sitka Spruce. I also remembered wandering along "Long Beach" (near Tofino) and noticed the same thing.

Years later, while working at the City of Long Beach (Washington of course) I looked at the famous photo in City Hall that depicts a gathering of city residents in front of the post office and women's reading room (now the City Hall building on Bolstad). The 1900's era photo was apparently taken looking north from the porch area and you can clearly see short scrubby vegetation of ferns, Sitka Spruce, possibly salal. I also ran across a water color by Joe Knowles' sister (name eludes me) this painting was done..possibly in the Seaview area in the 1920's and it also depicts a narrow beach dune area.

The upshot and my conclusion of this analysis is that the beach rapidly accreted post jetty construction and then the sandy plain was taken over and dominated by European Beach Grass..then Beach Pine and Sitka Spruce are slowly taking over. This process is actually pretty quick and in my lifetime, that is in the next 30-40 years, the grassy swards behind the fore dune will make this transition from somewhat sandy plain with occasional hummocks to total grass area to an areas with some evergreen trees to total domination by evergreens. This will happen before our eyes yet will go almost completely unnoticed.

Take a hike from Seaview Beach Approach to Beard's Hollow on Discovery Trail and you'll get the picture. I would predict that in within 50 years, the "dune" portion of our beach will again be narrow and svelte, as it likely was in the old days..old days. Two aspects of human culture will affect this. Fire and tree cutting.

During pre-historic times, it is probably that occasional fires (either started by humans or started by the very rare lightning storm) may have swept through the beach. In modern times, such large and ecosystem dominating fires are uncommon with some exception. That last two large fires were the ones near Ocean Butte Condominiums and the very large one at Benson Beach. But we really haven't had large fires.

Some owners cut pine trees for view or a fire protection zone (DNR recommends a 200 feet clear zone and limbing trees up 6' to prevent fast moving grass fires from becoming crown fires). This essentially keeps some beach areas in a beach grass look zone which is dominated of course by European Beach Grass.

The end result could be a patchwork of open areas and treed areas near shore. In the end..this might be reasonably close to what it may have originally looked like..of course we will never know the answer to the question. What was the beach truly like circa 1800?

This also squares with another of my observations..that is the occasionally erratic and unorganized behavior of humans is not to far off from the random reality of nature. We just to speed up the process to a pace far faster than the "natural" one.

Sustainability I

Sustainability I,

This is going to be one of those posts that goes on forever.

In some of my more darker moments I see the modern discussion on sustainability as nothing more than a clever discussion by well meaning people as they re-arrange the deck chairs on the Titantic while wearing cool eyeware with Ipod earbuds .

Why do I say this? Because as a biologist/ecologist/planner/natural historian..I am also forced to confront the ultimate question..what is going to mitigate human population growth? This unpopular question was very new wave 30 years ago (think Club of Rome, Limits to Growth, etc.) To arrive at that question is actually a consequence of something that a Native friend of mind said..that is when his elders make a decision, they make it thinking of the consequences of 7 generations. Seven generations is like somewhere around 175 years out. Talk about a planning horizon. Most planners are lucky to think 20 years in the future and few actually implement plans 10 years out.

Back to the deck chairs. What's a hybrid got to do with it? (sung to my fav Tina Turner tune). So I began to ask my dad and friends as well..when was the last time the beach was sustainable? We talked roads and ferries and electric light plants and on and on and on about when food begin to be imported (think canned food or staples like or sacks of rice, salt, sugar, or flour).

Here's what I came up with. The beach was pretty sustainable before about 1870-1880. I by beach I mean from Knappton-Chinook to Leadbetter Point. Before that period, in migration was slow, a few settlers, a few Natives. It is likely that the population at that time was less than it was 100 years earlier as the Natives had suffered the disastrous effects of epidemics (a theme I will return to) and the several thousands that inhabited Pacific County up to around the late 1700's had been reduced to a few hundred.

1. Local food production was high (milk, beef, vegetables, fish, shellfish) and/or gathered (think hunting, clamming, oystering, etc.)


2. Local building materials (sans nails and concrete) were plentiful and well used and that means local timber.


3. Local transport was foot, wind or sun powered (horses).


4. Local energy use was human power, horsepower, wind power, with some very likely modest inputs of coal and oil (think lamp oil).

By the late 1930's (6o years):

1. Roads and vehicles connected the beach with SW Washington and Oregon.


2. A local light plan powered light bulbs in homes.


3. Coal and oil are imported energy sources.


4. Internal combustion engines had replaced steam engines and steam engines had replaced by the former) replaced sailing vessels.


5. Cars replaced horses.


6. The train (clamshell railroad) had been and gone.


7. Food was starting to be imported more frequently via newly built roads


8. Building materials (plaster, concrete, steel, wire mesh finish lumber, etc.) began to be imported

By the 1970's

1. Bridges replaced ferries and the road network is upgraded


2. No local milk production...the dairies are long gone.


3. No significant local beef production (which is to say, no locally sourced meat markets).


4. No local green grocer (other than the farmers markets).


5. All energy sourced from out of the area (nearly 100%) and that includes, oil, propane, gas and electricity. The local contribution of wood declines and/or is being replaced by pelletized wood imported from outside the area.


6. Building materials..nearly if not 100% imported with the exception of crushed rock and sand (no concrete, asphalt, metals, glass, etc. is locally produced of course). I would hazard to guess that of all the trees cut in Pacific County, very few end up in local construction.

Today we are truly supported by the outside. Oddly enough, one trend is probably true today as it was 100 years ago and that is our death rate exceeds our birth rate and that only reason the population on the beach grows is due to in-migration. Without in migration, our population would retract and in a few decades we'd be like the Dakotas or Wyoming..a shrinking population.

I also like to think of sustainability as elegance of action. A small amount of energy leveraged to a cumulative use to extract more efficiency out of most anything. A really good example was a program sponsored by WSU nearly 20 years ago where by a researcher went out to farmers and demonstrated how a tractor tune and clutch adjustment up could save fuel by making the engine 1) run more efficiently and 2) making the most use that power by getting it to the ground..which equals tractive horsepower. He went out with a portable dynanometer and demonstrated before and after. This is why we use lower wattage bulbs, low flow water fixtures, pump up the tires in our vehicles, etc.

I've been puzzling over when the "beach" made a transition from locally sustainable to something else. This transition was probably around the late 1920's to mid 1930's and can be measured in a couple of ways, but three is one way in particular and that has to do with how we use energy.

Years and years ago, my Dad and I were talking with Ed Chellis (born and raised on the beach) and he commented about how open the beach looked back in the day and that there were two primary reasons. One was that the train used pine trees for fuel thus beach pine and spruce where cut for the fire box, the second was the train belched smoke and sparks and was always catching the grass on fire and the third was the open range allowed stock cattle/horses to browse and graze. Dobie Wiegardt commented that you could easily see the Klipsan Life Saving Station from Aunt Anna's house (Potrimpos Gallery on Bay Avenue). There were also fewer drainage ditches and more wetlands, thus open space.

Ed remembered skating to Oysterville from Ocean Park by way of a lake (long gone) that lay in swale a ways east of the Methodist Church Camp.

The principal mode of transportation, that of a tree fed train and grass fed horses resulted in an altered landscape. By the late 1930's the train was long gone and cars and roads had replaced horses for nearly two decades. Cars needed fuel, roads went from hand and horse built to tractor built, ferries needed steam power and went from wood and coal fired to oil fired boilers.

Thus use of coal and then oil to power generators resulted in light plants being built and Ilwaco had a light plant (Astoria as well). Doug Miller told me a few years ago that it was not surprising that that the first use of those plants was for lights thus "Light Plant". A 25 Watt service to a house was not uncommon and that lit a bulb, one 25 watt bulb!

As dams were built on the Columbia River, we went from using ancient energy (oil) to meltwater energy (snow) that flowed down the Columbia. I say flowed down the Columbia because most of that snow pack is in Canada and not in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada. This watershed maps shows the real deal.
So where am I going with this? Well that small cumulative and molecule by melting molecule process of water melting is what powers us. It used to power fish but no more.


















Here we are, at the mouth of the Columbia (which reminds me..if we are the mouth..where is the rest of the anatomy?) living off melting water.

Creaking Frogs

Creaking Frogs

For those of you following the weather, I heard the first New Year frogs croaking..more like slow croak, (imagine an old gate with a rusty hinge swinging every so slowly)... about 11 days ago. They are not very lively and two or three croakers does not make a chorus but post December weather, they were probably fooled into thinking that Spring is just around the corner. A mosquito buzzed me at Peninsula Golf on the weekend so a lot of time clocks are running fast this year. Then again, we are almost into February. Take a look a the various plant buds around your yard and your likely to see a lot of forced buds that are within a week of opening (pussy willows are already starting). The large anthill out west of us was dug up (bear perhaps) for the ant larvae and eggs.

Coyotes were yipping west of Seaview a few nights ago and remember, it only takes 2 coyotes to raise a ruckus and sound 2 dozen partying teenagers. Paul Luethe stopped by today and commented the repeat sighting of a small Cougar (100 pounds and I mean feline cat) in "North Seaview".

Nemah

Nemah

As I was blasting back from Olympia last night, this sunset image revealed itself just past the old Nemah Cafe. This is a small slough aptly named "Tide Slough" in the middle of the Nemah flats. The evening winter air was cool and a low fog formed over the salt marsh. The North Nemah River is just south of here about 400 yards. There is an old log dump at the North Nemah Bridge that was served by a logging railroad. Some of the piling and bulkheads can still be seen upriver of the bridge. Not to far from here was a WWI Spruce Division US Army logging camp that was setup for solidiers to assist in logging to provide wood for the war effort.

In the 60's and 70's, the Nemah (above the lowlands) was a favorite elk hunting area and the Cafe was operating. Most of the patrons where loggers. Two other cafes on 101 where also operating up until about 1960 or so. The Hunter's Inn was located just west on 101 from Johnson's Landing (US 101 and SR 4 intersection) and the Driftwood Inn at O'Meara Point (south of the USFWS office about 2 miles). These Cafe's are long gone for many reasons but one is that as logging got more effiecient, smaller crews became the norm, thus fewer men worked the woods. The other reason is probably related to better roads and vehicles, thus travelers didn't have to stop so often for whatever reason.

Condor

Condor,

I suppose I could write a novel on this project and give me time as I will. Suffice to say that I respect any public art for the sheer improbability of it ever happening.

Here is Bart Kenworthy, scupltor, as he contemplates the bird. Bart worked his tail off putting the big bird together in clay and just like a Condor, Bart's one tough bird as well.

The Condor Project was sponsored by a local not-for-profit organization; the Pacific County Friends of Lewis and Clark. They formed up about a decade ago to sponsor and support educational programs and projects that had some connection to the Lewis and Clark era. To get the Condor done meant raising money, finding a sculptor, finding a location, getting the sculpture finished, mounted, etc. This was completed in the fall of 2008 and the Condor is finished and proudly displayed at the Port of Ilwaco (just west of the ShoreBank Building).

So...how to make a condor? Well..first Bart does up the condor in clay. Then a mold maker turns the clay into molds which are then turned into forms to make wax molds that can be cast (lost wax process).

Fresh out of the molds, the parts look pretty clean and not to impressive. Here are some pieces of the condor including the tail and whale bones. The fellow on the left is welding a whale vertebrate together. This is exacting work as the entire piece must look exactly like a vertebrate with no sign of it being welded. Which then is assembled into the "backbone" so to speak. This became part of the base of the sculpture.

Then the pieces are "mocked up" as the chasers begin to figure out how to assemble the final sculpture and weld it together. As you can see, we are clearly getting to looking like a bird.

"And in the end....."

Dune Grass

Dune Grass

At some point I'm going to write about dune grass and ocean edge ecology. Until I get rolling on that you'll have to amuse yourselves looking at this all American dune fire from April of 2002. The images of the kite, Lewis and Clark columnar basalt rock, off-road beach rig, smoke, flame, volunteer fire fighters and American flag..left me at a loss for words then and now.

Spartina Wars

Spartina Wars

So your looking at this funky machine and this site aspires to natural history and your wondering what the hell is so natural about this! Well that is the point and time will reveal the nature of this history. This weird vehicle represents just a tiny bit of the heavy artillery employed in the War..an ecological war of wars yet to unfold. Dave Milne, my co-conspirator and often partner in ideas, and I hauled this sucker down from Taylor United's Bellingham ops via the Keystone-PT ferry and then, after fooling around with it for a few years, we hauled to WSU Pullman so it could enter a 3rd life as a test bed for other aquaculture uses. We got some interesting looks on the freeway.
Back in 2001, Dave and I spent some serious time looking at how Spartina could be crushed into oblivion. One of our favorite mud vehicles was the 4450 Rolligon. It worked pretty well as long as it was running (hydraulics, flat tires, etc). We did these tests on a thin dime but learned quite a bit as to the amount of force that it would take to crush the root structure. The idea came from Jack Wiegardt's experiences with a big Oliver tractor and that repeat driving over the root structure of the plant killed it. Doing this on a agricultural scale (as in thousands of acres) was possible but it required an application of terrestrial ag systems to an estuary and that is no mean feat. Most soft mud substrates can only be traversed by vehicles (other than an air boat)with .5 psi ground loading and that is serious low pressure tires/tracks, etc. and typically what a sno-cat can produce. And just because you can drive out there doesn't mean you can pull anything. Mud shears pretty easily thus tractive power, that is power to pull something, is limited by the wheel or tracks ability to grab ground and move ahead. After stewing about this and observing the USFWS's Quality Machine tracks in Pot Shot Slough, I ended up concluding that the vehicle's tracks or wheels/tires would be the easiest way to get ground penetration. Ed Erola (Chinook boat builder extraordinaire...I think he's about retired) and I came up with a large wheeled vehicles whose steel wheels were the "implement". Years later I came across this unusual vehicle designed to chug through exotic weed infested wetlands and it wasn't to much different from what Ed and I sketched out. To make it really interesting I concluded that it should be built of wood and burn Spartina to power a steam engine.

This machine (below) is an example of an amphibious tracked device. Good for exploration and access but limited in tractive power, that is an ability to pull something heavy.

Here is a sno-cat that had good tractive power. Sno cats are designed to push, grade, rototill snow and ice as they groom ski hills. Of course, it can't float so god help you if you get into trouble on the flats with the tide coming in! I'll rework this post in the future to explore these subjects. This sno cat towed this big roller I had built (thanks Dale Jacobson! for the roller part) and tested.

This roller [Sayce I] was made from an old sheet press, which was nothing more than a 1/2 inch shell mill roller about 10 feet long and weighing a ton+ It was big and heavy but in the end it had too much flotation. That is an example when size mattered and in this case, it was to large as it could not generate the proper amount of down force, even though it could "knockdown" the plant, it was not adequately crushing the root structure. Live and learn.

This is the Heckes-Sayce I roller. I got this on permanent loan from John Heckes and then Dave and proceeded to destroy it towing it across the mud flats testing it up in Oysterville. What made it work well was that it was narrow and had big angle iron flanges that penetrated into the mud. The tow rig was weak and the water tank that formed the core structure was weaker. When filled with water it was heavy, narrow and had all the right stuff to get to the Spartina root structure and it worked well till it hit a few stumps, piling, and just plain leaked and fell apart. I should have filled it with concrete.

I finally concluded that you had the ability to tow/pull and implement (an open question), then then a "Yap Wheel Gang Roller" might be the set up. At some point I was going to hunt up an old Sheep Foot roller (typically towed by a big cat, say a D-6 +) and try that out in the next stage of evolution as that type of roller was bascially two narrow water filled rollers with compressive "feet" (hence the name a "Sheep's Foot" roller). One point is that the root structure may have needed to be cut more than crushed, thus a penetrating disc might work just as well. Dave and I never got that far into our tests to experiment with cutting vs. crushing the roots.

Salmon Altar at the Isthmus

Salmon Altar at the Isthmus

Before State Parks redid the boat launch area at Cape D and before Maya Lin/Confluence project got involved, there was this simple stainless sink. On this day a troller happened to be motoring out to sea and I caught the shot. The table, where salmon are gutted and cleaned (no nice way to say that), the bay/river water, the boat, pretty much sum up our relationship with fish.

Gray January

Gray January

I was awaiting to be picked up at Astoria Ford when this photo appeared. The combination of sunrise, Saddle Mountain, morning light and the remains of the "mudsticks" was just too good to pass up. The piling represent the evolution of the natural resource industry. A marine "way", that is a ramp for hoisting boats in and out of the water and boat shop crosses from left to right and intersects an old train trestle that used to serve a sawmill located up Youngs Bay. CRPA used to build gilnetters at boat shops that were served by such ways. Which came first? Probably the sawmill, which was out of service when the boat shop was in service as the two uses appear mutually exclusive at this location. The photo is representative of change (boats , trains, and tide) and endurance (mountain and sun).

A View West

A View West

Oh see one en vue!

This is one of my favorite photos because it was taken at nearly the exact moment that a tsunami was supposed to strike the beach, sometime around 8:40 pm April 17, 2005! What was really difficult was to get the cell phone take a picture with the lighthouse light lit up at the exact right time. Dian and I had heard of the warning so we cruised on up to the North Head Lighthouse (passed a jam of fire trucks/emergency vehicles at the Beard's Hollow Overlook). We walked out to watch a spectacular sunset with 50 other like minded folks. Of course...those of you reading this blog might want to look up the history of what happened to the Scotch Cape lighthouse on Unimak Island when a 42 meter tall tsunami hit it (it was wood..not masonry like North Head). If you look left of the lighthouse, you'll notice ocean swells, one of which extends from the edge of picture to the headland and I like to think that's the "wave" from wherever it origininated (probably Aleutian Islands).

That's also code for too much L and C on the brain. 2009 is here and 2000 seems like yesterday. 1/10th of the new century is rapidly rolling up so it's time to kick the tires and light the fires. In the coming months I shall (attempt) to bore into..in no particular order: Beach ecology, global climate change, weeds, man and nature, local historical stuff here and there, the future of kind, the truly weird, pine trees, tsunamis, dogs, groundwater, etc. Some politics thrown in. Stay tuned.

Jim