The Central and Southern Florida Project (C&SF) — EATING THE EVERGLADES

        In terms of the Everglades and all things environmental, it should surprise no one that that "Save Us from Ourselves" sentiment carried the day. Especially with politicians who were running scared. From the large-scale and complex nature of the problem it was obvious that the many local political jurisdictions and even State agencies were completely out of their depths (no pun intended). Naturally, the State looked around for the deep-pocket solution and called on the U.S. Congress to step in and make their problems go away. But, given that specific situation, anyone with even a partially functioning brain knew what had to happen to the Everglades. For the vastly profitable farming community around Lake Okeechobee to thrive, the continuously inundated wetlands had to go. It was that simple, no matter what lies the Corps tells today.

        Recognizing the complex challenge as the enormous pork-barrel plum that it was, in 1948 Congress created the Central and Southern Florida Project, known to both proponents and opponents alike as the C&SF Project. Or simply, the Project. Geographically, the Project included the upper St. Johns River, the Kissimmee River Basin, Lake Okeechobee, the Caloosahatchee River, and the Everglades-Big Cypress Basin. In other words, much of central and all of southern Florida. It was Congress’s intention to provide flood control, drainage, and adequate water supply for agriculture and urban development. No mention was made, officially or unofficially, of the environmental destruction that would be required to accomplish those purposes. And why would there be? Sawgrass communities don’t vote nor, more importantly, do they contribute to Congressional election campaigns. Big surprise.

        However, the Flood Control Act of 1948, 80th Congress, Second Session, as published in House Document No. 643, contains a critical sentence that reveals its underlying motivation: “The inherent fertility of the area [the Everglades] and its resources made its development and use inevitable.” Allow me to rephrase that sentence so its meaning is crystal clear. So much money can be made by farming the fertile Everglades that there’s no possible way we can control our greed and not exploit the land. Which can be said in yet another more revealing way:

Let's all get fat eating the Everglades!

        Like the faithful lap-dog it has been from the moment of its conception, the Corps of Engineers rubbed its collective hands together and leaped to do the bidding of its Washington masters. After all, the Project was their meat, potatoes, and gravy. If Congress wanted the Everglades destroyed so political campaign contributors could get fat from growing crops or subdivisions, the Corps engineers would gladly see to it. Just get out of their way.

        Construction was started on the massive water management project in 1950.[1] By the 1970s it was in large part completed. The scale of the Project was staggering, including more than 1,500 miles of levees and canals (which today has grown to about 1,800 miles ), 150 gates and water control structures, and 16 major low-level pumping stations, some of which were at that time the world’s largest.[2] In addition, the Project created three large so-called water “conservation” areas that were used to impound excess water for flood control and later re-distribution.[3] It also provided a protective levee west of the natural bedrock ridge on the East Coast extending from around Homestead north to the eastern shore of Lake Okeechobee near the St. Lucie Canal. That levee severed the eastern 16 percent of the Everglades from its interior and totally blocked overland sheetflows so that property farther east would be protected from direct Everglades flooding. That “eastern perimeter levee” was originally designed and built to protect and promote the development of urbanized areas along the coast. Ironically, in the past three decades it has been transformed into the only effective barrier that has been able to prevent the extensive urban development on the Coast from marching inland across the Everglades. What had been strenuously opposed by environmental groups as environmentally destructive is now regarded by the same organizations as a critical physical barrier in holding back the enormous pressure of population growth and housing demand. What delicious irony.

        However, the pulsating heart of the drainage “improvements” and the most critical C&SF Project element was the Everglades Agricultural Area (EAA). Over 700,000 acres of the Everglades, featuring what were among the most fertile soils in America, were enclosed by levees and drained by canals to become home to sugarcane, winter vegetables, sod farms, rice fields, and cattle grazing. The Flood Control Act of 1948 mandated that that area would be managed for agriculture and so it has been. Prior to the 1950s, only a small portion of land near the Lake had been developed, even though the extremely rich organic soils made the region very attractive for farming. The problem was too much water. And that certainly was a problem the Corps could fix. Yes, siree, the Corps can move water. Therefore, the new water table in the EAA was designed to be maintained about two feet below the soil surface to protect crops. Aren’t civil engineers grand? They can’t recognize environmental destruction in front of their very eyes but they can sure manage the hell out of water.

        Even people relatively unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Corps may know that its projects, by Federal law, must be justified by a positive benefit-cost ratio. Meaning that after all the money is spent on drainage improvements and canal/pumping station operations, the net result has to be activities that have positive annual financial value. Well, at least on paper using shell-game numbers created by the Corps’s economists (more on that fascinating topic later). It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that the major economic justification of the C&SF Project was the EAA.

        During the period from 1906 to 1927, approximately 80 square miles of land south of Lake Okeechobee were farmed. After the Project was started in the 1950s agricultural production soared. Of course, the rapidly rising national demand (previously pent up as an effect of WWII) for food crops helped a great deal. By the mid-1970s, more than 125 sugar cane farms covered 330 square miles, producing over 800,000 tons of sugar annually.

        Today, more than 50 percent of the sugar produced nationally is harvested in the EAA on approximately 900 square miles that are exclusively devoted to sugar cane production.[4] The water management needs of the EAA are served by 15 canals and 25 control structures. After construction, the Corps turned that system and all of the C&SF Project over to their bosom buddies, the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), which became responsible for day-to-day operations and maintenance. Today, throughout south Florida the SFWMD operates and maintains 1,800 miles of canals and levees, 25 major pumping stations and about 2,200 water control structures. The District includes 16 counties with a total population of about six million residents living in approximately 18,000 square miles stretching from the Kissimmee River to Florida Bay. That, in a nutshell, is the C&SF Project.

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[1] Cited at The Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP), Development of the Central and Southern Florida (C&SF) Project.: http://www.evergladesplan.org/about/restudy_csf_devel.cfm

[2] I’ve always found that term to be most instructive. By its own description, the Corps was simply managing water. It had no concern for habitat, wildlife, ecosystems, food webs, or anything remotely related to the environment. As long as it moved water in the right amounts it was doing its job. And there, in a nutshell, is their mind-set and the problem south Florida faces today. Online source: http://www.sfwmd.gov/site/index.php?id=4

[3] All told, the Project consisted of 862,800 acres, or more than half of the remaining Everglades.

[4] The EAA totals about 1,200 square miles.

The Destruction of South Florida Environment — EATING THE EVERGLADES

      The south Florida environment we see today is the result of intense human intervention that started well over 130 years ago. That the human use of a previously natural environment has altered the landscape drastically in ways that are easily visible and undeniable shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. We all see evidence of the human alteration of the Earth every time we go outdoors. What may be a surprise is that, as a direct result of that human intervention, today the Everglades are dying and the entire south Florida web of interconnected eco-systems is at risk of total collapse. That’s no exaggeration. If you look at that landscape as a business visitor, a vacationer, or as a resident and fail to understand the changes that have occurred in the 20th and 21st Centuries and that continue as you read this page, you cannot fully understand either the landscape you’re seeing or what the future may hold for all south and central Florida. So, this segment requires Readers to change gears, to take a long look behind the scenes in an effort to understand the means by which the previously natural south Florida environment has been drastically altered. And to understand the complex and intertwined reality that today has left only painful options and no easy solutions.

        My goal in this segment is to explore today’s problems of restoring the Everglades to a more natural state without overwhelming Readers with technical complexities. The best way to accomplish that goal is to start slowly, at the beginning. With the evolution of south Florida from a natural wetland to a human-altered landscape dependent for its daily survival on civil engineers and water managers who neither knew nor cared anything about biology or the proper functioning of complex ecosystems when they started their destructive drainage and water control projects.

        In 1850, Congress jammed its fat fingers into the pie and changed the Everglades forever when it extended provisions of the Swamp Lands Acts of 1849 to the State of Florida. That one action conveyed 20 million acres of what were called “swamp and overflow lands” to the State, which was then supposed to “reclaim” those lands so it could collect taxes when people started developing them. You have to realize that at that time practically everyone thought that swamps were wastelands or wilderness that had to be conquered and reclaimed before people could use them. Or, if nothing else, to be drained to improve public health by getting rid of mosquitoes and other pests. So, how was that reclamation to occur? Through construction of increasingly elaborate drainage systems and levees that would convert wetlands to agricultural uses and settlements. Thus allowing the State to harvest the economic potential (meaning taxes) of what had previously been unusable natural resources. As a result, over the next decades millions of acres were sold and contracts for drainage provided the State a way to deed land in consideration of the cost of drainage, giving one acre for every twenty-five cents expended by private companies or wealthy individuals. Remember old Hamilton Disston? He was only the first of many land-obsessed, would-be Florida real estate moguls.

        By 1911, more than 15,000 individuals and corporations owned land in the northern Everglades. Keep in mind that at that date it is certain that the vast majority of the properties owned by those people were under water once a year at the absolute minimum. Water that almost certainly was in depths ranging from four to twelve feet. Ah, don’t you marvel at the power of con men to create real estate booms by selling Florida swampland like hotcakes? It was private enterprise unfettered by interference from a State that knew from the get-go whose side it was on. And it wasn’t on that of the unsuspecting public. Doesn’t that sound like a slightly warped version of the Republican Dream? Today, Readers with political axes to grind might think that the administrations responsible for creating anti-regulatory circumstances that allowed and even encouraged corruption would be Republican. Yet, in history’s harsh light, those conscienceless bastards were Democrats through and through, at least until recent times. Which proves that unfettered avarice and chicanery pay allegiance to no political party.

        Prior to large-scale drainage, the Kissimmee River flowed with magisterial languor from north of Lake Tohopekaliga to Lake Okeechobee, which then distributed the water farther south through the Everglades in extensive and almost continuous overland sheetflows to Florida Bay. That’s why the Everglades earned the name River of Grass from the passionate environmentalist, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas. 
        Because those sheetflows sustained the vast sawgrass plains and ridge and slough areas south of Lake Okeechobee. That water would then slowly evaporate as it moved toward Biscayne and Florida Bays or would be taken up and then transpired into the atmosphere by sawgrass and other water-adapted plants. The resulting water vapor was absorbed into the atmosphere and was distributed over the Kissimmee River Valley and Everglades-Big Cypress Basin until it condensed and fell out in the form of precipitation. And the cycle would start over.

        We know now that the natural hydrologic cycle was and is critical to the survival of the Everglades and every environment in central-south Florida. The complex mosaic of life that depends on this system is truly remarkable. If that cycle is disrupted, at stake is everything from habitat for periphyton (tiny but environmentally critical one-celled algae that form the basis of life in the Everglades), to rookeries for colonial wading birds, and drinking water supplies for human residents and visitors. Alas, what took thousands of years for nature to create would take but a few decades of concentrated human intervention to permanently alter and even to destroy.

        The initial period of modern drainage, which ran from 1906 to 1927, was marked by a flurry of construction projects that were intended to lower water levels in Lake Okeechobee and drain the northern Everglades. Making the land south of the Lake usable for agriculture and grazing. Profits, boys, profits. Belly up to the trough and get fat by eating the Everglades. To accomplish that end, a canal was built connecting the Caloosahatchee River to Lake Okeechobee. Additional canals were dredged from the Lake via the Miami, New, Hillsboro, West Palm Beach, and St. Lucie Rivers.

        The Grand Prize that land developers fixed their eyes on was the approximately three million acres of black peat and muck lands south of Lake Okeechobee. A 1911 U.S. Senate document concluded that, “Plans have been laid out for the drainage and reclamation of the Everglades by means of lowering the waters in Lake Okeechobee and the reduction of the water level in the Everglades, thus making available and habitable approximately 3,000,000 acres of exceedingly fertile lands, and funds have been provided to complete the work which is now one-third completed.”[1]

        Pork barrel politics at its finest. Florida Congressmen were learning how to belly up to the public trough and get fat. That marked the beginning of the era of a business-controlled State Legislature and large-scale, federally-funded pork barrel projects, an era that has yet to run its course.

        Although an eight-foot earthen dike had previously been built along Lake Okeechobee’s south shore to protect local residents and farmers from flooding, that construction would prove pathetically inadequate when the nut-cruncher of reality finally hit home. In 1928, a massive hurricane moved north along Florida’s east coast. Near Palm Beach it veered inland, dropping ten inches of rain as it passed through West Palm Beach. As the hurricane tracked west, its powerful winds, circulating in a counter-clockwise direction, pushed enormous quantities of water toward the southern end of Lake Okeechobee. The huge mass of water easily overtopped the earthen dike, first ripping away the clay cap and finally causing the dike to fail altogether. Water as high as 25 feet cascaded over villages and farmlands to the south. Most of the drowning victims, variously estimated from 1,800 to 7,000, were black migrant farm workers (many of whom were from Haiti) who lived around the city of Belle Glade and in western Palm Beach County and had had insufficient warning of the fast-approaching storm. They had no time to flee and died by the hundreds in the turbulent flood waters.[2]

        In response to the ensuing outraged demands for protection from what was proving to be a harsh and not easily tamed environment, the Federal Government initiated a new round of flood control measures. Human nature being what it is few people seriously considered moving away from such a hazardous but potentially lucrative opportunity. And why would they? The Federal Government was there to solve the problems for them.

        In 1930, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began construction of the Herbert Hoover Dike that would girdle the Lake and separate the Everglades from its freshwater supply. That single act marked the death spiral of the natural Everglades. The Dike, which ranged in height between 32 and 45 feet, effectively transformed Lake Okeechobee from a natural system that had fed the Everglades through almost continuous overland sheetflows into a very large bathtub whose waters were controlled by man-made canals and pumping stations. And the inevitable result? That massive human intervention would alter the natural Everglades watershed and cause severe and lasting environmental consequences that would, in turn, gradually but inevitably create severe problems for human settlement throughout south Florida. A big surprise to very few perceptive observers, a category, which, of course, excluded the Corps of Engineers, the Federal agency responsible for the drainage “improvements.”

        Between the 1930s and the mid-1940s, south Florida was pounded by an increasingly harsh drought-flood cycle in which each alternating period seemed to be worse than the preceding. And why? The natural water cycle of the Kissimmee-Okeechobee-Everglades-Big Cypress watershed had been ripped apart and was put back together with critical pieces missing. And the most critical missing piece was fresh water. Sort of makes you wonder if the Corps of Engineers is capable of learning from its mistakes.[3] More on that key topic later.

        Approximately 100 inches of rain fell on southern Florida in 1947. Few people ever anticipated that the end of what had been a devastating drought would eventually turn into the death-knell of the last remaining part of the natural Everglades. But in less than a month two hurricanes and a tropical storm would dump even more water on the already saturated land. Problem was, given the flat, flat landscape, that water literally had no place to go but to rise higher and higher. It wasn’t long before more than 90 percent of south Florida was inundated. Hundreds of people died. Thousands were without homes, water, or electricity. You can imagine the resulting political fallout. The battle-cry was raised by an angry public that knew exactly what they wanted from their elected representatives:


                            PROTECT US FROM OUR OWN STUPIDITY.

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[1] U.S. Senate, 1911, Document 89: “Everglades of Florida, acts, reports, and other papers, state and national, relating to the Everglades of the state of Florida and their reclamation.” 62nd Congress, 1st Session. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.

[2] For an interesting read about the disaster, see: Eliot Kleinberg, Black Cloud: The Great Florida Hurricane of 1928; Carroll & Graf, New York, 2003; and Michael Grunwald, “Water World,” The New Republic, 03-01-04. Author’s Note: As an aside, if that number of white people had died in a natural disaster, what is the likelihood that the event would have received greater media and historical coverage and would appear in our history textbooks?

[3] The above point is neither made facetiously nor merely for effect. For an analysis of how an adaptive ecological learning approach can facilitate more holistic understanding that is useful to decision-makers and political representatives, see: Clyde F. Kiker, J. Walter Milon, and Alan W. Hodges; “South Florida: The Reality of Change and the Prospects for Sustainability: Adaptive Learning for Science-based Policy: the Everglades Restoration,” Ecological Economics, vol. 37, no. 3, pp. 403-416, June, 2001. There is scant evidence, if any, that the Corps has adopted such a learning approach.

Alligator Saga #1

It was on the University of Florida campus that I first met alligators face-to-face, so to speak. On a warm early April day, toward the end of my first year as a doctoral student, I was sitting outside one of the University’s large lecture halls waiting for a fellow grad student. We had arranged to have lunch together. Since the walkways would be flooded with thousands of students pouring out of the wall of doors in the lecture hall as soon as the hour was up, I had selected a vantage point that provided an unequaled view of the surroundings. A four-foot high limestone outcrop at the edge of a circular sinkhole lake. Incidentally, the University of Florida campus contains over a hundred sinkhole lakes large and small so the situation, though quite lovely, was nothing out of the ordinary. And no, I’m not shamelessly bragging about my alma mater.

I stood on the ledge and surveyed the surrounding area. In many ways it was a picture-perfect location. A tranquil lake with several small sandy areas along the water’s edge shaded by two or three palms and a few tall pines. An attractive young woman sat eating her lunch on one of the miniature “beaches.” She sat about five feet from the water, engrossed in a magazine. Truth be told, I probably paid more attention because she was a little older than the typical coed undergraduate, therefore fairly close to my age. And was, as I mentioned above, attractive.

A well-padded female Mallard waddled across the sand toward the young woman, quacking softly. It was as domesticated as a pigeon, exhibiting no fear of the boisterous crowd of nearby students. It’s my guess that begging bread scraps from accommodating students was part of its modus operandi. It simply regarded the woman sitting on the sand as a lunch opportunity.

I quickly scanned the ever-increasing mob pouring out of the building. But my friend was not among them. At six foot-five he would be relatively difficult to miss. Not seeing him, my attention turned back to the young woman.

That’s when I noticed the alligator in the lake. It wasn’t large. Certainly less than six feet. It’s total length was difficult to see because its body was hanging down in the water at a 60° angle. Only the upper part of its head broke the surface. Moving slowly but steadily through the water, it was absolutely intent on the duck. Which the gator without doubt regarded as a lunch opportunity.

Before I could warn the young woman the gator literally exploded from the water, its tail driving it upward like the powerful organic machine it was. It pounced on the hapless duck, clamped it in its mouth, instantly flopping back into the water and disappearing from sight. All in no more than a second. And literally at the young woman’s feet. As I remember, her shorts and blouse were wet from the gator’s re-entry splash.

Naturally, the unanticipated attack scared the absolute living shit out of her. She screamed hysterically, not believing what had happened. Trying unsuccessfully at first to scramble to her feet, she fell in the sand. Her entire body was shaking. Legs unable to work properly. The appropriately cute damsel in distress. My ass didn’t move an inch from the ledge, content the observer to be.

A moment later, as students gathered around to offer help and find out just what the hell had happened, the successful predator surfaced in the middle of the lake, its body nearly vertical, duck firmly in its pearly teeth. The gator’s jaws opened as it prepared to consummate its tasty snack and the poor bird uttered its final lamentation, “Quaaaaack,” before disappearing from sight forever. The event gave sinister meaning to the popular saying, “Let’s do lunch.”

University of Florida 02

One of our fellow grad students (who shall be nameless for reasons that will soon be obvious), did his doctoral research on settlement patterns in the wilds of one of the countries located in the northern tier of South America, which one I can’t recall. When he returned he was asked by Dr. Raymond E. Crist, a Latin Americanist who specialized in both land tenure issues and physical geography, to present a slide show on his research area.

Allow me to digress a moment to set up the story. Professor Crist was one of those rare professors of enormous erudition. He had doctorates in two very different and unrelated fields, the first in petroleum geology and the second in human geography and had performed original, published research in both. He had studied as a grad student in Switzerland, Germany, and France and was fluent in French, German, and Spanish, not to mention his native English. He had worked for more than a decade in four or five Latin American countries as an exploration petroleum geologist before doing the PhD in geography in Grenoble, France. Plus, he was a courtly gentleman who treated grad and undergrad students with kindness and consideration. His courses were always full and in 1967-1968 he was selected Teacher/Scholar of the Year by the University. In short, Crist was a terrific person and a scholar of distinction.

Our evil brains began clicking as soon as our friend had been asked to do the slide show. The potential for a great practical joke was in the air. We knew we could zap him if we could get to his slides immediately before Crist’s class. But he knew what we were capable of so guarded those slides as though they were made of the purest gold, never letting them out of his sight.

The first thing we did was to make our own slides so we could insert them unbeknownst into his carrousel. Then we watched like hawks for weeks for the right opportunity, thinking eventually he would lose focus and give us the opening we needed. No luck. The days counted down without a single chance. He began bragging in the grad room where we all had carrels that there was no way we would screw up his presentation, which was sort of a tradition among a certain group of us grad students who lived on the edge of respectability and maturity.

As luck would have it, on the day before the presentation I was in the Grad Room reading at my carrel and our friend was loading his carrousel for the next day’s lecture. The two fake slides we had prepared were under a book on my desk, waiting to be inserted. To my amazement and delight our friend’s doctoral advisor came in and approached my friend and started talking to him about a problem he found in one of the chapters of his doctoral research. As they bent over a table and examined several typewritten pages and hand-drawn maps their backs were to the carrousel.

Recognizing what was a golden opportunity I grabbed the slides and casually made my way to the front of the room. No one noticed me. Sneaking silently to the exposed carrousel I quickly pocketed the ones that had been loaded, inserted the new slides, and slipped back to my carrel, bending over a book as if engrossed. At that instant my friend looked around the room suspiciously but saw that no one had moved, or so it seemed.

The next morning four of us plotters sat in on the slide show in Crist’s Latin America class. We occupied the back row, trying to look bored and painfully disinterested, as if we were in attendance only out of reluctant courtesy to a fellow grad student. On his way to the front of the classroom, Crist stopped, took one look at us, and raised one bushy eyebrow, “Well?” was all he said.

I simply winked at him and he immediately turned and headed for the front of the room. We all looked at each other, stunned that he had an inkling as to what was going on. Shows you exactly how smart he was in comparison to the idiot grad students. Ha.

A few minutes into our friend’s presentation he advanced to a slide that was supposed to show a local, open-air, farmers market. But the slide was one of ours, a rear shot of a very large Missouri mule with its tail up in the act of taking an impressive dump. Naturally, the class roared. Our friend stared at the slide in open-mouthed astonishment and quickly clicked the hand-held device to advance to the next. But the next slide was that month’s Playboy centerfold in all her pulchritudinous, full-color glory. In our friend’s desperate anxiety to advance the slide the remote slipped from his hand and skittered across the floor with the slide staying emblazoned on the screen. The class erupted and we quietly exited, having done as much damage as we possibly could. And, of course, fleeing before our apoplectic friend could mercilessly slaughter us.

An hour later Crist stopped in the Grad Room, came over to where we were talking, and gave us the thumb’s up. “Good job, men. It was a classic to be treasured.”

Before he could leave I asked, “Which slide, Professor? The mule or . . ?”

He grinned like a naughty boy and said, “Why, the centerfold, of course.” And left us rolling in laughter.

Flood Basalt, Deccan Traps, Large Igneous Province, and Ontong-Java-Province

Flood Basalt            Plateau basalt extrusion extending many kilometers in vast, flat, layered flows that erupted from numerous volcanic fissures. Flood basalts form one type of large igneous province. See also fissure eruption, mantle plume, and mass extinctions. Real World Examples: The Deccan Traps in India and the Siberian Traps are two of the world’s largest and best examples of flood basalts (see the Table below for additional data) but if you want to see first-hand what one looks like the Columbia River Flood Basalt Province in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho is much more accessible to North Americans. Many geochemists and geologists are convinced that all three of the flood basalts mentioned as examples above had their origins as mantle (magma) plumes.

FLOOD BASALT FLOWS

Event                                                                    Date                         Volume

Ontong Java/Nauru                                       21-124 mya               38-55 x 106 km³

Kerguelen Plateau/Broken Ridge               114-109.5 mya          15-25 x 106 km³

North Atlantic                                                  57.5-54.5 mya           6.6 x 106 km³

Deccan Traps                                                65-69 mya                  8.2 x 106 km³

Columbia River                                             6-17.5 mya                 1.74 x 106 km³

Ethiopian Traps                                             31± 1 mya                  7.5 x 105 km³

Siberian Traps                                              249-216 mya             2.3 x 106 km³

Parana Plateau Brazil                                  119-149 mya             12 x 105 km²

CAMP                                                            200 mya                     2 x 106 km³

Karoo Basalts                                               166-206 mya             >1.4 x 105 km²

Snake River Plain                                         16 mya                       0.5 x 105 km²

        Recent evidence collected from the Siberian Traps by geochemists Asish Basu (University of Rochester), Stein Jacobsen (Harvard University), and Robyn Hannigan (then at the University of Rochester) demonstrated that more than a half-dozen chemical elements and rare isotopes distributed throughout the basalts are now rare on the Earth’s surface but are common in parts of the lower mantle that originated soon after the birth of the solar system. They concluded that the Siberian flood basalt arose from super-heated, buoyant rock that rose in a narrow column from a depth of 1,800 miles into a gigantic mushroom-shaped mass of hot material just 40 to 50 miles below present-day Siberia. Then, some 250 mya, 12 to 16 percent of that rock suddenly melted (probably from depressurization or decompression) and broke through fissures in the Earth’s crust, resulting in a vast flood of lava. The total area of the Tian Shan Cretaceous-Paleogene Large Igneous Province (LIP) basalt distribution is 285 000 sq. km, a number that is comparable to other large igneous provinces (Ernst and Buchan, 2001), such as the Emeishan Traps in China at 250 000 sq. km. Data on the Tian Shan LIP basalts indicate that they were formed as a result of a large mantle plume during a relatively short time. The Deccan Traps were emplaced practically synchronously with the Tian Shan LIP basalts, a synchronicity that suggests that the Deccan Traps and same-aged basaltic rocks of the Tian Shan represent a plume cluster that originated from the same deep mantle source in the form of a superplume rising from the core-mantle boundary.

        For more information, see the following articles. Don L. Anderson. “The Sublithospheric Mantle as the Source of Continental Flood Basalt: The Case against the Continental Lithosphere and Plume Head Reservoirs,” Earth and Planetary Science Letters, vol. 123: pp. 269-280, 1994; Richard E. Ernst and Kenneth L. Buchan, “Large mafic magmatic events through time and links to mantle-plume heads; in: Richard E. Ernst and Kenneth L. Buchan (eds.), Mantle Plumes: Their Identification through Time, Geological Society of America, Special Paper 352, pp. 483-575, 2001; and Richard E. Ernst and Kenneth L. Buchan, “Maximum Size and Sistribution in Time and Space of Mantle Plumes: Evidence from Large Igneous Provinces,” Journal of Geodynamics (Special Issue) vol. 34: pp. 309-342, 2002. Aleksander V. Mikolaichuk and Vladimir A Simonov, “Cretaceous-Paleogene basalts of the Tian Shan,” March 2006, online at: http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/LOM.html.

        For those geoscientists infected by wanderlust but desirous of a more salubrious climate than frigid Siberia or the Tien Shan, a trip to Brazil’s Rio Grande do Sul flood basalt province might be instructive.

        Author’s Note: In several places the Columbia Plateau basalt is about 10,000 feet thick. Individual flood layers typically range between 50 and 350 feet thick so it is easy to see how many individual flows would be needed to accumulate 10,000 feet of volcanic materials. Road cuts and areas where the basaltic layers have exposed by erosion demonstrate their characteristic parallel, vertical columnar jointing, which is usually hexagonal, though areas of six-sided columns are not uncommon. Enough lava flowed out of the Siberian Traps to cover Europe in thousands of feet of lava; in another perspective, that lava flow was so extensive that it could have covered the entire surface of the Earth with a layer of basaltic rock ten feet thick.

Although the amount of lava pumped onto the Earth’s surface by the flood basalts is truly staggering, that’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of other effects these phenomena would have had on the Earth. Terrence M. Gerlach of Sandia National Laboratory in Albuquerque used one of the Kilauea eruptions as a model and estimated that the Deccan Traps injected up to 30 trillion tons of carbon dioxide, six trillion tons of sulfur (start thinking sulfuric acid) and 60 billion tons of halogens (reactive elements such as chlorine and fluorine) into the lower atmosphere over a period of a few hundred years (reported by Vincent E. Courtillot in “A Volcanic Eruption,” Scientific American, October, 1990, pp. 85-92). Now, think of all the flood basalts listed in the table above and their combined effects on the Earth’s surface and atmosphere. And then think about what would happen to the Earth if ALL that volcanic activity occurred almost simultaneously, like the Young Earth advocates and creationists would have us believe. Exactly what would all that carbon dioxide, sulfuric acid, nitric acid, and other noxious chemicals do to living organisms? Have you heard the term, volcanic-nuclear winter? Nearly every organism in the ocean would die since the various acids would lower the pH of seawater to levels that wouldn’t sustain life. And the C0₂ injected into the atmosphere would be in the range of many thousand parts per million (perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 ppm or more), meaning that Earth’s surface temperature would be intolerably hot, as in several hundred degrees. In other words, in that unbelievable scenario nearly all life on Earth would die. Yet, here we are. It must be a miracle.

Deccan Traps                 Enormous flood basalt lava outflow in central and western India and one of the Earth’s largest volcanic provinces. In their pre-erosional state, the Traps may have covered as many as 200,000 square miles of basalt estimated to range in volume from 200,000 cubic miles to well over 1,000,000 cubic miles. The most precise date yet for the end of the main pulse of Deccan volcanism has been estimated at 64.9 mya, give or take 100,000 years, and shows that the volcanic activity occurred precisely at the Cretaceous and Tertiary boundary (see Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction in mass extinctions). In addition, several independent studies have documented the presence of iridium (a platinum group element thought to indicate the effects of a bolide impact on the Earth) between layers of the flood basalts. Author’s Note: Although many scientists have thought that the Traps were caused by a hot spot or mantle plume, other evidence collected in the late 1990s by Indian geophysicists has called into question the widely accepted mantle plume model. According to their theory, the Deccan continental flood basalt province is more correctly related to continental rifting in a non-plume, plate tectonic environment. Recently, however, additional evidence has been presented by Richard Muller and others that points to an impact origin that may have brought about both decompression melting as well as the extinction event; see core-mantle boundary for additional related information. Since this debate is far from settled, be sure to watch the professional literature for additional research. The word trap is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning a step, which is in reference to the step-like topography produced by the flat, stacked layers of lava.

Large Igneous Province (LIP)                 Enormous outpourings of predominantly basaltic magma that commonly cover areas of 105 km² or more in a continuum of voluminous magmatic constructions that include continental flood basalts and associated intrusive rocks, volcanic passive margins, oceanic plateaus, submarine ridges, seamount groups, and ocean basin flood basalts. Although plate tectonic theory provided a breakthrough in understanding how the continuous opening and closing of ocean basins reflects convection in the Earth’s upper mantle, it is now known that LIPs form independently of plate settings on continents, in oceans, along margins between the two, and either wholly within plates or at plate boundaries. A number of geophysicists believe that the alternative mode of convection manifested by LIPs may be how other terrestrial planets and moons lost most, if not all, of their interior heat. However, a growing number of geophysicists have proposed an alternate method of formation for LIPs: bolide impact-induced melting. According to this theory, decompression melting would occur almost simultaneously upon impact, triggering long-lived mantle upwelling and eruption that may in many respects resemble a mantle plume or hot spot and have plume-like geochemical signatures. Decompression melting and the upwelling magma would quickly auto-obliterate the craters and would explain their conspicuous absences on Earth when compared to other planets in the solar system.

        The largest LIPs occur in ocean basins, especially the giant plateaus such as the Ontong-Java Plateau and Shatsky Rise in the western Pacific and the Kerguelen Plateau in the Indian Ocean. Flood basalts also erupted along many “volcanic passive margins” (e.g., Greenland, eastern North America, Brazil, Norway, Namibia, and northwest Australia) during continental breakup, as well as in continental settings, such as the Columbia River Flood Basalt Province, Deccan Traps in India, Karoo/Ferrar in South Africa/Antarctica, Parana in Brazil, and the Siberian Traps.

        Field investigations, laboratory research, and modeling efforts to understand LIP formation and development have been initiated only recently. Those efforts are comparable to investigations of the mid-ocean ridge system that preceded development of the plate tectonics paradigm. At this time no single theory adequately explains the Earth’s large-volume basaltic magmatism. However, recent geophysical research involving the core-mantle boundary may have provided theoretical arguments that eventually are capable of tying together the now disparate threads. Understanding the processes in the Earth’s mantle and crust and the effects of LIPs on the oceans, atmosphere, and biosphere is of particular importance. Because the scientific problems associated with LIPs range widely, scientists from many disciplines are involved in their study. A list of fields involved in LIP research is extensive and includes among others geophysics, geochemistry, geochronology, petrology, mineral physics, rock deformation, oceanic and atmospheric chemistry, physical volcanology, paleomagnetics, tectonics, seismology, geodynamics and hydrodynamics, micropaleontology, paleoclimatology, paleoceanography, sedimentology, planetary geology, astrogeology, and remote sensing. For additional and fascinating technical information online, see http://www.largeigneousprovinces.org/frontiers

Ontong-Java Plateau (OJP)              Massive outpouring of igneous rock formed about 120 mya near the Solomon Islands in the western Pacific. The OJP may be the Earth’s largest such province, with a surface area roughly the size of Alaska. Although it is generally believed that igneous provinces such as the OJP were formed as part of the initial plume-head stage of hot-spot development, other theories are extent, as is illustrated below. The most widely accepted plume-head model predicts that such plateaus were formed in massive eruptions of basaltic magma (see magma, types of) that lasted only a few million years or less, most likely resulting in major atmospheric, oceanographic, and biospheric effects. Nearly all of the large igneous provinces in the oceans were formed in the Cretaceous period, suggesting a method of mass and energy transfer from the Earth’s interior to the surface that was considerably different from the mid-ocean ridge mode of the Cenozoic. If, as evidence to date suggests, most of the greater OJP was formed in a single volcanic episode lasting a few million years, then the magma production rate required for its formation would have rivaled that of the entire global mid-ocean ridge system at the time. The OJP may therefore represent the largest igneous event of the last 200 million years. The principal characteristics of the greater OJP may be summarized as follows.

Formed in the early Cretaceous, about 120 mya

Presently obducting along the Solomon Islands Trench

Includes the Ontong-Java Plateau and neighboring basin basalts

The most voluminous LIP on Earth at ~ 60 million cubic kilometers

Aerially extensive, covering about 0.8 percent of the total surface area of the Earth

Geochemically and structurally homogeneous with no evidence of continental lithosphere

Presently in isostatic equilibrium with the sea-floor except for the obducting margin

Widely believed to have been formed by the Louisville hot spot, a large mantle plume head

        However, with respect to the origin of the greater OJP, recent research has demonstrated that many geophysical, geodynamic, and geochemical results from studies of the greater OJP are at odds with various mantle plume origin models. A fascinating and recently made suggestion is that an extraterrestrial impact model is much more consistent with existing data and results than the mantle plume explanation. That model would include the following elements:

Penetration depth of about 36 miles

Initial crater diameter of about 120 miles

Massive decompression melting in the upper mantle to a minimum depth of 180 miles assuming 100 percent partial melting as a result of the removal of lithospheric overburden

Solid asthenospheric mantle, moving laterally inward and upward from below to replace the extracted mantle may have experienced a catastrophic decrease in pressure during its emplacement beneath the OJP, resulting in the low shear-wave velocities observed by Richardson et al.

        The authors of the research paper that has been summarized above (Ingle, S. and M. F. Coffin, 2004.  “Impact origin for the Ontong Java Plateau, Earth Planet,” Science Letters, vol. 218, pp. 123-134) note that the absence of recognized bolide impact craters on the deep ocean floor is remarkable. Reliable estimates based on the present-day terrestrial cratering rate predict that up to three bolides at about six miles in diameter should have struck the deep ocean basins in post-Jurassic times. The greater OJP may be the evidence of one such impact. tholeiitic basalt

        Author’s Note: Of course, a great deal of field and lab research will have to be performed to test such an impact model. For example, if tsunamis deposits, disturbed abyssal sediments, and spherules and highly-siderophile element anomalies are discovered in contemporaneous, local sediments then the model will become much more interesting to geophysicists. However, I have included this information on the OJP not because the idea has been thoroughly tested and has been shown to be correct but because it is the highly exciting, cutting-edge stuff that makes science so spell-binding and flat out irresistible. Additional closely related information can be found under large igneous province and large igneous province, silicic-dominated. Recent research (2006) of sea-floor fabric data by Brian Taylor of the University of Hawaii concluded that the OJP and the nearby Manihiki Plateau and Hikurangi Plateau were at one time continuous and formed a single entity until sea-floor spreading separated them and moved them apart. Interested observers should keep their eyes on the literature for more information.

University of Florida 01

I need to take care of a few small but important details before jumping into academic life at the University of Florida. After I accepted the research assistantship, Prof. Anderson invited me to Gainesville at the Department’s expense to tour their offices, meet the faculty, be introduced to the University campus, and sign a housing contract. Sandy, who had yet to recover completely from being pissed off at my agreeing to go to the University of Florida and leave St. Louis without sufficient consultation with her, demanded that I take photos of the married student housing where we would be living. She also insisted on it being air conditioned since Florida was so hot and humid.

Naturally, wanting to mollify her, I had agreed but knew problems were on the horizon. From the pile of information Anderson had sent me, I knew that of the four married student housing complexes, on the RA salary I would be paid we could only afford the cheapest, a grim looking place called Flavet Village. Flavet was short for Florida Veterans since the two-story wooden, barrack-like buildings had been constructed in 1946 to house married veterans taking advantage of the GI Bill. So, you can imagine what they looked like in the mid-1960s. That was going to be a very hard sell and I wasn’t sure how it would work because the brochures Anderson sent included the information that Flavet units could not be air conditioned because of electrical wiring issues.

Since I was under specific instructions to take pictures of Flavet on my trip I had to come up with something but hadn’t a clue as to what that would be. Because I knew that if the housing didn’t meet Sandy’s requirements she would NOT go to Gainesville and my plans for an academic future would be circling the drain. I was not about to let that happen. Call my attitude selfish if you like but that was my dream and I wasn’t going to let it slip away over something like the lack of air conditioning.

The trip was a fantastic success. After introducing me to the faculty — and the departmental secretary, Sharon Leigh, a slim, incredibly foxy young woman about my age with short carroty-red hair and devil-may-care eyes — Anderson took me to the Grad Room, a large open room filled with carrels, light tables, shelves filled with geography and related books, a couple old but still serviceable couches, a new refrigerator, two electric typewriters, and various types of cartographic equipment. It was bright and airy and looked like a grad student’s dream. Mine at the very least.

On the second day I walked to the Housing Office and signed the contract for Flavet. Only then did I think about the photo. I walked to Flavet and went up and down the narrow lanes looking for an attractive building to shot. No luck. Using my version of Sandy’s eyes I knew they all looked unacceptable. That’s when I remembered seeing a Flavet-like structure that was in good condition on one of the main roads. So, I hiked in the direction I thought would bring me near that building and was right on the money. There it was, looking exactly like the Flavet Village units. But recently painted and with an air conditioning unit in the window. Of course I took that picture and represented it to Sandy as a typical Flavet building.

I’d pay dearly for that decision later but moved we did. When we packed the car and a small trailer with our non-furniture possessions I made sure we brought my grandfather’s old window fan. It was easily the most powerful fan I have ever seen, before or since. An old industrial model it could literally suck a gold ball through a hose. We turned out to be the envy of all our Flavet neighbors because our apartment was always the coolest. By far.

*     *     *

The University of Florida’s Geography Department was an exciting place to be in the late 1960s. It wasn’t in the top ten grad departments in the U.S. but had a better than adequate reputation. One shining light was the Chairman, James Anderson, known to grad students as Big Jim because of his stature and girth, who had started his career as an agricultural specialist with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (and who over the course of the next few years taught me why all Americans should hate that agency and the billions of ag welfare dollars doled out to wealthy corporate farmers by their good friends in Congress) and then developed a national reputation in land use and land cover analysis. Another was Stanley Brunn, a young professor from Ohio State who specialized in urban social issues like crime and poverty. I immediately requested Stan as my advisor and that was arranged.

The critical variable, and one that I hadn’t given much thought, were the grad students. Most of them were very bright and hard-working. Some were exceptionally so. I found out that Wayne Hoffman and Gerry Romsa, two of the older guys everyone looked up to, had been TAs/RAs and PhD students at Ohio State University and switched to the U of F when Brunn came. I initially thought that was strange but then was told that the two had been fucked over by the OSU Geography Department. They had been forced to leave when they supported a university-wide TA strike for better pay and working assignments. When they refused to cave in the department dismissed them and Brunn had gotten them assistantships at Gainesville. Not my first introduction to how assholes thrive in academia.

During that first semester I worked as a research assistant for David Niddrie, a South African who specialized in Africa, tropical agriculture, and Caribbean (island) geography. He was a stern task master who I got along with well, working hard to make sure he was always pleased with my efforts. I drew a number of maps for a book he was writing on the Cahora Bassa project in Mozambique, did research for his professional papers, and taught his classes in the cultural geography course when he was too busy or was traveling on a research project. I also taught a few classes in Brunn’s urban geography course.

To my surprise and delight, halfway through that first semester, Anderson called me into his office and offered me a National Defense Education Fellowship. It would pay all my tuition, books, and fees as well as provide $500 a month and have no duties, meaning no teaching or research responsibilities. Plus, it would pay $2,000 toward my dissertation costs. All I had to do was get a B average over the year. Knock me over with a feather. Hell yes, I accepted his offer. Back in 1967, $500 was worth around $4,000 today, not counting the money for books, fees, and tuition I suddenly didn’t have to pay. It was a sweet deal.

*     *     *

Another sweet deal for Sandy and I fell out of the sky about two weeks after we had arrived in Gainesville and one week after starting coursework. One night after an extended session in which we played one of the early games that simulated urban development, Gerry Romsa, a third-year grad student who hailed from Canada, asked me if I was flush.

“Flush?” I asked. “You meant financially?”

When he responded in the affirmative I told him the truth, that we had about $200 in our bank account and no real prospects of adding to that until I received the monthly paycheck from the University for my RA duties. He then told me his wife was leaving a part-time job she was doing for Harry Warfel, a professor in the English Department. It was a tedious but simple job that involved cleaning up Xeroxed copies of old manuscripts using White-Out and very fine tipped paint brushes. Warfel would then publish those old books. If Sandy would be interested in taking it on his wife would arrange an interview with Prof. Warfel. Hell, yes, she’d do it. I knew she would because taking care of David, who was four months old at the time, didn’t occupy all her day. And we needed the money, big time.

When I returned to our Flavet apartment that night I told her about Gerry’s inquiry and she immediately agreed. In short, she got the job, which paid $2 an hour, and we both did what we came to call Warfel-work from then until we left Gainesville in May 1970.