Author: Neville

Monbiot.com

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The Grime Behind the Crime

Posted: 07 Jan 2013 12:17 PM PST

Could an astonishing explanation for the rise and fall of violent crime be correct?

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 8th January 2013

It seemed, at first, preposterous. The hypothesis was so exotic that I laughed. The rise and fall of violent crime during the second half of the 20th century and first years of the 21st were caused, it proposed, not by changes in policing or imprisonment, single parenthood, recession, crack cocaine or the legalisation of abortion, but mainly by … lead.

I don’t mean bullets. The crime waves that afflicted many parts of the world and then, against all predictions, collapsed, were ascribed, in an article published by Mother Jones last week, to the rise and fall in the use of lead-based paint and leaded petrol(1).

It’s ridiculous – until you see the evidence. Studies between cities, states and nations show that the rise and fall in crime follows, with a roughly 20-year lag, the rise and fall in the exposure of infants to trace quantities of lead(2,3,4). But all that gives us is correlation: an association that could be coincidental. The Mother Jones article, based on several scientific papers, claimed causation.

I began by reading the papers. Do they say what the article claims? They do. Then I looked up the citations: the discussion of those papers in the scientific literature. The three whose citations I checked have been mentioned, between them, 301 times(5). I went through all these papers (except the handful in foreign languages), as well as dozens of others. To my astonishment, I could find just one study attacking the thesis(6), and this was sponsored by the Ethyl Corporation, which happens to have been a major manufacturer of the petrol additive tetraethyl lead. I found many more supporting it. Crazy as this seems, it really does look as if lead poisoning could be the major cause of the rise and fall of violent crime.

The curve is much the same in all the countries these papers have studied. Lead was withdrawn first from paint and then from petrol at different times in different places (beginning in the 1970s in the US in the case of petrol and the 1990s in many parts of Europe), yet, despite these different times and different circumstances, the pattern is the same: violent crime peaks around 20 years after lead pollution peaks(7,8,9). The crime rates in big and small cities in the US, once wildly different, have now converged, also some 20 years after the phase-out(10).

(US Bureau of Justice)

Nothing else seems to explain these trends. The researchers have taken great pains to correct for the obvious complicating variables: social, economic and legal factors. One paper found, after 15 variables had been taken into account, a four-fold increase in homicides in US counties with the highest lead pollution(11). Another discovered that lead levels appeared to explain 90% of the difference in rates of aggravated assault between US cities(12).

A study in Cincinnati finds that young people prosecuted for delinquency are four times more likely than the general population to have high levels of lead in their bones(13). A meta-analysis (a study of studies) of 19 papers found no evidence that other factors could explain the correlation between exposure to lead and conduct problems among young people(14).

Is it really so surprising that a highly potent nerve toxin causes behavioural change? The devastating and permanent impacts of even very low levels of lead on IQ have been known for many decades. Behavioural effects were first documented in 1943: infants who had tragically chewed the leaded paint off the railings of their cots were found, years after they had recovered from acute poisoning, to be highly disposed to aggression and violence(15).

Lead poisoning in infancy, even at very low levels, impairs the development of those parts of the brain (the anterior cingulate cortex and prefrontal cortex) which regulate behaviour and mood(16). The effect is stronger in boys than in girls. Lead poisoning is associated with attention deficit disorder(17,18), impulsiveness, aggression and, according to one paper, psychopathy(19). Lead is so toxic that it is unsafe at any level(21,22).

Because they were more likely to live in inner cities, in unrenovated housing whose lead paint was peeling and beside busy roads, African Americans have been subjected to higher average levels of lead poisoning than white Americans. One study, published in 1986, found that 18% of white children but 52% of black children in the US had over 20 milligrammes per decilitre of lead in their blood(23); another that, between 1976 and 1980, black infants were eight times more likely to be carrying the horrendous load of 40mg/dl(24). This, two papers propose, could explain much of the difference in crime rates between black and white Americans(25), and the supposed difference in IQ trumpeted by the book The Bell Curve(26).

There is only one remaining manufacturer of tetraethyl lead on earth. It’s based in Ellesmere Port in Britain, and it’s called Innospec. The product has long been banned from general sale in the UK, but the company admits on its website that it’s still selling this poison to other countries(27). Innospec refuses to talk to me, but other reports claim that tetraethyl lead is being exported to Afghanistan, Algeria, Burma, Iraq, North Korea, Sierra Leone and Yemen(28,29), countries afflicted either by chaos or by governments who don’t give a damn about their people.

In 2010 the company admitted that, under the name Associated Octel, it had paid millions of dollars in bribes to officials in Iraq and Indonesia to be allowed to continue, at immense profit, selling tetratethyl lead(30). Through an agreement with the British and US courts, Innospec was let off so lightly that Lord Justice Thomas complained that “no such arrangement should be made again.”(31) God knows how many lives this firm has ruined.

The UK government tells me that because tetraethyl lead is not on the European list of controlled exports, there is nothing to prevent Innospec from selling to whoever it wants(32). There’s a term for this: environmental racism.

If it is true that lead pollution, whose wider impacts have been recognised for decades, has driven the rise and fall of violence, then there lies, behind the crimes that have destroyed so many lives and filled so many prisons, a much greater crime.

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lead-crime-link-gasoline

2. Rick Nevin, May 2000. How Lead Exposure Relates to Temporal Changes in IQ, Violent Crime, and Unwed Pregnancy. Environmental Research, Vol.83, Issue 1, pp1–22. http://dx.doi.org/10.1006/enrs.1999.4045

3. Rick Nevin, 2007. Understanding international crime trends: the legacy of preschool lead exposure. Environmental Research Vol. 104, pp315–336.
doi:10.1016/j.envres.2007.02.008

4. Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, May 2007. Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 13097. http://www.nber.org/papers/w13097

5. The three papers whose citations I checked were Rick Nevin, May 2000, as above;
Rick Nevin, 2007, as above and Jessica Wolpaw Reyes, May 2007, as above.

6. Patricia L. McCalla and Kenneth C. Land, 2004. Trends in environmental lead exposure and troubled youth, 1960–1995: an age-period-cohort-characteristic analysis. Social Science Research Vol.33, pp339–359.

7. PB Stretesky and MJ Lynch, May 2001. The relationship between lead exposure and homicide. Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, vol.155, no.5, pp579-82.

8. Paul B. Stretesky and Michael J. Lynch, June 2004. The Relationship between Lead and Crime.Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol.45, no.2, pp214-229. doi: 10.1177/002214650404500207

9. Howard W. Mielke and Sammy Zahran, 2012. The urban rise and fall of air lead (Pb) and the latent surge and retreat of societal violence. Environment International Vol. 43, pp 48–55. doi:10.1016/j.envint.2012.03.005

10. Bureau of Justice, no date given. Homicide Trends in the U.S. http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/homicide/city.cfm

11. PB Stretesky and MJ Lynch, May 2001, as above.

12. Howard W. Mielke and Sammy Zahran, 2012, as above.

13. Herbert L. Needleman et al, 2002. Bone lead levels in adjudicated delinquents: a case control study. Neurotoxicology and Teratology, Vol. 24, pp711 –717.

14. David K. Marcus, Jessica J. Fulton and Erin J. Clarke, 2010. Lead and Conduct Problems: a Meta-Analysis. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, vol.39, no.2, pp234-241. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15374411003591455

15. R.K. Byers and E.E. Lord, 1943. Late effects of lead poisoning on mental development, American Journal of Diseases of Children, Vol. 66, pp. 471– 483.

16. Kim M Cecil et al, 2008. Decreased Brain Volume in Adults with Childhood Lead Exposure. Decreased Brain Volume in Adults with Childhood Lead Exposure. PLoS Medicine, vol. 5, no. 5. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0050112

17. Joel T. Nigg et al, January 2010. Confirmation and Extension of Association of Blood Lead with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and ADHD
Symptom Domains at Population-Typical Exposure Levels. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. Vol. 51, no.1, pp.58–65. doi:10.1111/j.1469-7610.2009.02135.x.

18. Joe M. Braun et al, 2006. Exposures to Environmental Toxicants and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in U.S. Children. Environmental Health Perspectives vol. 114, pp.1904–1909. doi:10.1289/ehp.9478

19. John Paul Wright, Danielle Boisvert and Jamie Vaske. July 2009. Blood Lead Levels in Early Childhood Predict Adulthood Psychopathy. Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice, vol.7, no.3, pp.208-222. doi: 10.1177/1541204009333827

20. Rick Nevin, 2007, as above, reports that “there is no lower blood lead threshold for IQ losses”.

21. David Bellinger concludes that “No level of lead exposure appears to be ‘safe’ and even the current ‘low’ levels of exposure in children are associated with neurodevelopmental deficits.”. April 2008. Very low lead exposures and children’s neurodevelopment. Current Opinion in Pediatrics, Vol.20, no.2, pp172-177. doi: 10.1097/MOP.0b013e3282f4f97b

23. Royal Society of Canada, 1986. Lead in the Canadian Environment. Science and Regulation. Cited by Rick Nevin, 2007, as above.

24. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, 1988. The Nature and Extent of Lead Poisoning in Children in the United States. US Department of Health and Human Services. Cited by Rick Nevin, 2007, as above.

25. Rick Nevin, 2007, as above.

26. Rick Nevin, February 2012. Lead Poisoning and The Bell Curve. Munich Personal RePEc Archive MPRA Paper No. 36569. http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/36569/

27. http://www.innospecinc.com/octane-additives.html

28. http://www.economist.com/news/21566385-lead-tantalisingly-close-death-2013-world-meant-stop-using-leaded-petrol-toxin

29. Anne Roberts and Elizabeth O’Brien, 2011. Supply Chain for the Lead in Leaded Petrol. LEAD Action News, vol.11, no.4.

30. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/mar/18/firm-bribes-banned-chemical-tetraethyl

31. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/jun/30/octel-petrol-iraq-lead

32. I was passed by Defra to the Department for Transport, then by the DfT to the Department for Business, which told me it was all down to the European list. It was clear that none of them were remotely interested in the issue, or had considered it before.

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Bob Brown to lead Sea Shepherd

Date January 8, 2013 – 4:34PM 15 reading now
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Andrew Darby

Hobart correspondent for Fairfax Media

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Bob Brown on a visit on a Sea Shepherd ship in August. Photo: Ben Rushton

Former Australian Greens leader Bob Brown is to take over running the imminent Antarctic anti-whaling campaign by hardline conservationists Sea Shepherd.

In a shift forced by a Japanese restraining order in a United States court, the group says its founder and president, Paul Watson, is stepping down from the leadership.

Direction of the group’s campaign to halt the Japanese whaling fleet will shift to Dr Brown and Sea Shepherd’s Australian manager, Jeff Hansen.

Paul Watson. Photo: Tim Watters

Mr Watson, 62, who is wanted by Japan under an Interpol “red notice”, remains at sea aboard the group’s flagship, Steve Irwin.

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He said 35 years after he founded the group he was resigning from all paid positions, as well as the captaincy of the Steve Irwin, and would remain on board as an observer of the campaign.

Mr Watson pledged to operate within boundaries set by a US appeal court restraining Sea Shepherd from attacking the whalers, or coming within 450 metres of their ships in the Antarctic.

“As a US citizen, I will respect and comply with the ruling of the US 9th District Court and will not violate the temporary injunction granted to the Institute for Cetacean Research,” he said.

Dr Brown, who resigned from the Greens leadership last year, said he would be taking advice from Mr Watson, but rejected any suggestion that the switch was a token move.

“He’s behind the scenes, but he’s not in charge of the operation,” Dr Brown said.

“I’ll be every day working, as will Jeff, working with the Sea Shepherd fleet under the authority of Sea Shepherd Australia, to make sure this mission is successful.”

For the first time, Sea Shepherd will use four ships in its campaign, including a recently acquired former Japanese research ship, renamed the Sam Simon.

In response to the leadership changes, the Japanese consul-general in Melbourne, Hidenobu Sobashima, reiterated concerns that Sea Shepherd was jeopardising the safety of crews and ships engaged in research whaling.

Former Howard government environment minister Ian Campbell said it was time for the Gillard government to offer an assurance that Mr Watson could land in Australia safely.

Mr Sobashima was asked whether Japanese authorities had sought Mr Watson’s arrest if he came ashore here.

“I am not a position to explain specific communications between Japan and Australia,” he said.

The whaling fleet is about two weeks steaming away from the Antarctic.

In a notice to the International Whaling Commission, the Japanese government confirmed it had issued the ICR with a permit to kill up to 935 minke whales, 50 fin whales and 50 humpbacks.

The humpback kill, which would target whales that migrate along the Australian coasts in winter, would again be suspended, the ICR said.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/whale-watch/bob-brown-to-lead-sea-shepherd-20130108-2ce5e.html#ixzz2HMoMefnM

Katter’s party to contest all federal lower house seats

ABCJanuary 8, 2013, 1:41 pm

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Katter’s Australian Party is planning to run candidates in all Lower House seats for the next federal election.

The party, formed by federal independent MP Bob Katter, has announced plans to contest all 150 seats and also run for the Senate in most states and territories.

The party holds three seats in State Parliament in Queensland.

The national director of Katter’s Australian Party, Aidan McLindon, says the two major parties have morphed into one.

“We will make sure that we have covered our base right across Australia,” he said.

“We are pulling no punches and giving people an alternative.”

However, Mr Katter has admitted the party has so far attracted less than half the potential candidates that it needs.

Mr Katter also says he will make an exception for South Australia, depending on the wishes of independent Senator Nick Xenophon.

“We would be preserving that relationship and if Nick wants us to run there, we will be running there,” he said.

“But if not, we will be throwing our whole-hearted support behind Nick Xenophon.
“We don’t agree with Nick on everything but the really important issues we’ve fought side-by-side.”

Katter’s party to contest all federal lower house seats

ABCJanuary 8, 2013, 1:41 pm

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Katter’s Australian Party is planning to run candidates in all Lower House seats for the next federal election.

The party, formed by federal independent MP Bob Katter, has announced plans to contest all 150 seats and also run for the Senate in most states and territories.

The party holds three seats in State Parliament in Queensland.

The national director of Katter’s Australian Party, Aidan McLindon, says the two major parties have morphed into one.

“We will make sure that we have covered our base right across Australia,” he said.

“We are pulling no punches and giving people an alternative.”

However, Mr Katter has admitted the party has so far attracted less than half the potential candidates that it needs.

Mr Katter also says he will make an exception for South Australia, depending on the wishes of independent Senator Nick Xenophon.

“We would be preserving that relationship and if Nick wants us to run there, we will be running there,” he said.

“But if not, we will be throwing our whole-hearted support behind Nick Xenophon.
“We don’t agree with Nick on everything but the really important issues we’ve fought side-by-side.”

Obeid link to Tigers under the spotlight

Date January 7, 2013 15 reading now
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Kate McClymont, Linton Besser

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Eddie Obeid … linked to the Balmain Tigers development. Photo: Dean Sewell

THE question of whether the family of the former Labor MP Eddie Obeid has a financial interest in the controversial Balmain Tigers development has resurfaced with the appointment of an Obeid associate to the chairmanship of Wests Tigers.

Nick Di Girolamo, 42, is a close family friend of the Obeids who has borrowed an undisclosed sum of money from Mr Obeid’s son Eddie jnr.

Through his position on the Tigers board, which has a 50 per cent stake in Wests Tigers, Mr Di Girolamo has been pushing for the controversial Balmain Tigers redevelopment at Rozelle.

Controversial … an artist’s impression of the Balmain Tigers development.

Another Obeid associate, the former Tigers rugby league great Benny Elias, has an interest in the redevelopment, which has been rejected repeatedly by planning authorities.

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A $2 company run by Mr Elias’s brother Joe won the tender for the multimillion-dollar maritime development at Blackwattle Bay in 2009. Mr Elias was assisted in his bid by Eddie Obeid jnr.

Frank Sartor, the former planning minister, recently gave evidence to the Independent Commission Against Corruption that the only time his colleague Mr Obeid lobbied him directly was over the redevelopment of the Tigers football club. ”You’ve got to call it in, mate, we’ve got to get things done,” Mr Sartor told the commission Mr Obeid said.

In his book, Mr Sartor said Mr Obeid urged him ”to declare it to be a major project under Part 3A and to deal with it”. Mr Sartor declined.

Mr Obeid has previously admitted attending a meeting in 2010 relating to the Balmain redevelopment with the planning minister Tony Kelly and Richard Pearson, the deputy director-general of the planning department. Mr Obeid said he was asked to help by a friend, Nick Di Girolamo, who was a board director. But corporate documents reveal that Mr Di Girolamo was not on the Balmain Tigers board until 2011.

Despite the development being rejected by planning authorities last year because its two towers, at 16 storeys each, were too high, the developers increased the proposal to 32 storeys and 26 storeys. Yet another proposal has been put forward for 27 and 25 storeys.

Asked if he or his family had any stake in the Tigers, Mr Obeid said: ”I don’t wish to talk or make any comment.”

Mr Di Girolamo is the chairman of Australian Water Holdings, a company that had Eddie Obeid jnr on its payroll. Mr Obeid snr lobbied extensively on the company’s behalf while in Parliament.

The former state treasurer Michael Costa, who recently quit as chairman of AWH, said he joined the board after Mr Obeid introduced him to his ”family friend” Mr Di Girolamo, who has strong connections to the Liberal Party. Mr Di Girolamo holds shares in AWH on behalf of the company’s former chairman Arthur Sinodinis, now a federal Liberal senator.

Last year AWH and Sydney Water entered a new 25-year exclusive agreement to give AWH the sole right to project manage $500 million of water infrastructure work in Sydney’s north-west growth centre.

ICAC recently seized AWH-related documents from Sydney Water.

Mr Di Girolamo denied that any of the Obeids had any interest in AWH. Several AWH shareholders have been revealed to be ”fronts” for the Obeid family. A Strathfield real estate agent, Joseph Georges, is being used by the Obeid family to hide its interest in the Elizabeth Bay marina. Mr Georges has been called to give evidence about his relationship to the Obeids when ICAC resumes late this month.

Greg Skehan, a partner at the law firm Colin Biggers & Paisley, is another AWH shareholder. Mr Skehan’s role as a front for the Obeids to hide their interest directly in a mining venture was recently revealed at ICAC.

A Herald investigation also reveals that Mr Di Girolamo is a director of a resources company, Anconna Resources, with the Obeids’ lawyer Sevag Chalabian.

Mr Chalabian, a former partner at Phillips Fox, admitted helping the Obeids to create an elaborate series of trusts and front companies to disguise a $60 million payment the Obeids were to receive from Cascade Coal, which won what is now alleged to have been a rigged government tender. The corruption inquiry heard that Mr Chalabian’s trust account was used to disguise the identity of the recipient of the first $30 million payment to the Obeids.

The inquiry also heard that Eddie Obeid jnr ran messages between Mr Chalabian and Cascade Coal director Richard ”Digger” Poole over the buyout of the Obeids’ 25 per cent stake in Cascade.

Mr Skehan is also a shareholder in Anconna Resources. According to the Italian Chamber of Commerce, of which Mr Di Girolamo is the chairman, ”Anconna Resources is an Australian-based resources company with substantive links to business and government throughout Australia”.

Anconna’s role is to guide ”foreign investors through the process of investing in Australian resources projects”.

But in a statement to Fairfax Media, Mr Girolamo said “Anconna Resources was established to provide consulting services to the resources and mining industry in Asia. It has not traded and I am no longer a director nor shareholder.”

His spokesman, John Wells from corporate advisory firm Wells Haslem, told Fairfax Media that Mr Di Girolamo had resigned from the company but corporate documents are yet to reveal those changes.

Apart from Mr Skehan’s private company holding shares, another shareholder in Anconna is Tennille Koelma, whose husband Tim Koelma is a former aide to the Resources Minister, Chris Hartcher. Mr Koelma was suspended on full pay in late March for allegedly overseeing a slush fund that took donations to support the minister’s favoured candidates on the central coast. He has since resigned.

Mr Chalabian, Mr Skehan and Mr and Mrs Koelma did not return Fairfax Media’s calls.

Do you know more? investigations@smh.com.au

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/obeid-link-to-tigers-under-the-spotlight-20130106-2cb6k.html#ixzz2HGN5d0RY

The Dreaded Section 44 Rural Fires Act 1997
This section sounds reasonable enough. In real terms, the Rural Fire Service can seize power similar to ASIO.

Just how has this harmless sounding legislation taken away so much?

A strange pattern leads to a Section 44…

It ignores bushfire science, bushfire training manuals and locals jumping up and down because once again they are in danger…

Section 44s are declared once small fires grow into big ones… with no early all-out effort to put them out.

Instead of water bombing and groundcrews to put fires out quickly, a small effort is ordered so that fires grow bigger if there is no weather change.

Then, backburning and drops of incendiary devices make fires even bigger.

They spread if the inevitable summer cycle of hotter days takes hold.

A Section 44 is declared once fires reach dangerous proportions to become wildfires.

Helicopters are called in to water bomb, but not enough to put out the fires.

More arrive, but days and even weeks pass with never enough aircraft to quell the flames.

If the flames are low, RFS Air Attack Supervisors order helicopters to fly in later in the morning.

If the fires are high and reaching dangerous proportions, the aircraft arrive earlier, but it is of course beyond their control then.

More and more helicopters arrive as the fires continue to build.

A fleet of 14 with two skycranes costs insurance companies and taxpayers about one million dollars for two days.

Insurance companies foot 72% of the bill, having to pay a levy similar to the way we pay for electricity.

Under the section, an RFS helicopter can land on your property without permission and take water from dams, creeks, rivers and swimming pools.

The NSW – RFS is under no obligation to replace your water, leaving many to complain of financial difficulties.

Two skycranes dump about an Olympic pool full in two days.

RFS crews can take your vehicles, bulldoze your fences and destroy any property it deems fit.

You can also be ordered off or to sit idly by as RFS crews do whatever they want.

Not so long ago, at Peter Spencer’s property on the NSW southern highlands, RFS intervention brought two giant fireballs to his native forest.

One escaped into national park. According to locals, a NSW Government media release blamed Mr Spencer for the escaped fireball, saying he lit an illegal hazard reduction that went out of control.

The story ran on radio and in the local newspaper according to Mr Spencer.

Press statements said that Mr Spencer would be sued for the damage.

He said his hazard reduction was legal and safe until the RFS elbowed him out.

“I felt perplexed how something so simple could have been carried out well by me and my nine-year-old son.

“It went out of control once RFS vehicles moved in and declared a Section 44.

“It doesn’t make sense. They obviously didn’t know how to do a burn.”

At one critical stage, about 15 RFS vehicles were on his property he said.

Peter Spencer is one case in many of landholders complaining of the section’s bitter costs.

But it sounds so harmless…

RURAL FIRES ACT 1997 – SECT 44
Commissioner’s responsibility
44 Commissioner’s responsibility

(1) The Commissioner is to take charge of bush fire fighting operations and bush fire prevention measures and to take such measures as the Commissioner considers necessary to control or suppress any bush fire in any part of the State if, in the opinion of the Commissioner:

(a) a bush fire has assumed or is likely to assume such proportions as to be incapable of control or suppression by the fire fighting authority or authorities

in whose area or locality it is burning, or

(b) the prevailing conditions are conducive to the outbreak of a bush fire likely to assume such proportions, or

(c) a bush fire is not being effectively controlled or suppressed by the fire fighting authority or authorities in whose area or locality it is burning, or

(d) a bush fire is burning in a place that is not the responsibility of any fire fighting authority.

(2) The Commissioner may delegate the Commissioner’s functions under this Division (other than this power of delegation) to an officer or member of a rural fire brigade, an officer or member of New South Wales Fire Brigades, officers of the Forestry Commission, officers of the National Parks and Wildlife Service or any other person.

(3) The Commissioner is not subject to the control and direction of the Bush Fire Co-ordinating Committee in exercising the Commissioner’s functions under this Division but must, in exercising those functions, take into consideration any relevant bush fire management plan and, in the case of managed land, any relevant plan of the authority responsible for the managed land of which the Commissioner is aware.

Thanks go to Dr Christine Finlay who hold s a PhD in Bushfires and has the hands on experience of working with the ground volunteers while producing her phD and produced this explanation of tool most used by the RFS Homebush Bunker management team.

You may form your own opinion as to how useful this act can be and the many uses it has.

New Way to Study Permafrost Soil, Above and Below Ground

Jan. 4, 2013 — What does pulling a radar-equipped sled across the Arctic tundra have to do with improving our understanding of climate change? It’s part of a new way to explore the little-known world of permafrost soils, which store almost as much carbon as the rest of the world’s soils and about twice as much as is in the atmosphere.

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The new approach combines several remote-sensing tools to study the Arctic landscape — above and below ground — in high resolution and over large spatial scales.It was developed by a group of researchers that includes scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

They use ground-penetrating radar, electrical resistance tomography, electromagnetic data, and LiDAR airborne measurements. Together, these tools allow the scientists to see the different layers of the terrestrial ecosystem, including the surface topography, the active layer that seasonally freezes and thaws, and the deeper permafrost layer.

The goal is to help scientists determine what will happen to permafrost-trapped carbon as the climate changes. Will it stay put? Or will it enter the atmosphere and accelerate climate change?

The scientists report their approach in a paper recently published online in the journal Hydrogeology. Their research is one of the first papers published in association with a new Department of Energy project called the Next-Generation Ecosystem Experiment (NGEE-Arctic), which seeks to gain a predictive understanding of the Arctic terrestrial ecosystem’s feedback to climate. The NGEE-Arctic project is a collaboration among scientists and engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Berkeley Lab, and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

“By combining surface geophysical and airborne remote-sensing methods, we have a new window that allows us to study permafrost systems like never before,” says Susan Hubbard, a geophysicist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth Sciences Division who leads the Lab’s participation in the NGEE-Arctic collaboration.

The scientists tested their system on a plot of land near Barrow, Alaska, that measures about 500 meters long and 40 meters wide. Hubbard and her team conducted their first field campaign at the site last fall when the system was freezing up. They’ve since returned several times to conduct more research.

To characterize the land surface, they used data from a remote sensing device called LiDAR, which is short for Light Detection And Ranging. The device was mounted on a Cessna aircraft. It uses light to measure the microtopography, which controls water drainage in the Barrow region.

The scientists use data from airborne Lidar, surface geophysical measurements, and point measurements to explore the complex relationships between different layers of permafrost soil.

The scientists also used three tools to explore the hidden world below the surface. Ground-penetrating radar was pulled from one end of the plot to the other. They set up a string of electrodes at different locations to conduct electrical resistance tomography measurements. Electromagnetic data was collected along more than a dozen lines that spanned the length of the plot. The scientists also collected point measurements of temperature, moisture, and other properties at several locations to verify the data from the remote-sensing tools.

These geophysical measurements, coupled with the point measurements, allowed the scientists to see how the different layers of the permafrost system vary spatially, including the topography, the active layer, and the deeper permafrost. They could also see how these layers relate to each other.

These new vantages will enable the team to learn much more about how permafrost systems change over time — and what this means for trapped carbon.

For example, permafrost is often covered by a patchwork of polygons that form over successive freeze-thaw cycles. Using their suite of tools, the scientists observed arelationship betweenthese surface polygons and the distribution of water on the surface. The LiDAR measurements revealed three types of polygon areas — high-centered polygons, low-center polygons, and in-between — each with unique moisture drainage characteristics (High-centered polygons shed water, while water often pools in low-centered polygons).

In addition, geophysical data and point measurement revealed a relationship between the different types of polygons and subsurface thermal, chemical, and hydrological properties. These properties control how microbes degrade soil carbon, which leads to the generation of greenhouse gasses such as carbon dioxide and methane.

More specifically, the ground-penetrating radar and electrical resistance tomography measurements provided high-resolution information about the thickness of the active layer and water content. These instruments also detected the presence of permafrost features such as ice wedges, which help form polygons.

The electromagnetic data provided information about several permafrost characteristics, including the discovery of a region that appears to be unfrozen, possibly due to the intrusion of saline water that lowers the freezing point.

“Overall, this combination of methods helps us understand the spatial and temporal interactions between surface microtopography, the active layer that controls soil respiration and generation of greenhouse gasses, and the deeper permafrost layer, which controls the formation of the polygonal features,” says Hubbard. “This approach also allows us to sample over large spatial regions with minimal disturbance to the ecosystem — two important criteria when it comes to studying the vast and delicate Arctic landscape.”

NGEE-Arctic is supported by the Office of Biological and Environmental Research within the Department of Energy’s Office of Science.