- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
Showing posts with label greenspace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greenspace. Show all posts
2013-01-10
2012-12-01
2012-07-14
Elysian Park to DTLA
I had a nice stair walk with my buddy Dan. This was one of the sights along the way - neighbors have planted similar impromptu gardens all along this road above Elysian Park.
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
2012-05-21
Point Vicente lighthouse
I stopped by the lighthouse on the way home. I hadn't been before, and there's a delightful native plant garden and "wild" area adjacent on the bluff tops.
The best scenery is out towards the ocean, however.
Up at the inland edge of the "wild" area there's a wooden rail fence. On the right is the wild area. On the left is some developer's or homeowners' association idea of compatible plantings. This photo has Agapanthus and sprinkler irrigation. Indian Hawthorne, sheared to a fare-thee-well and Fortnight Lily adorn the irrigated hell strip adjacent the road. If only they had used smarter choices.
Don't do this.
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
The best scenery is out towards the ocean, however.
Up at the inland edge of the "wild" area there's a wooden rail fence. On the right is the wild area. On the left is some developer's or homeowners' association idea of compatible plantings. This photo has Agapanthus and sprinkler irrigation. Indian Hawthorne, sheared to a fare-thee-well and Fortnight Lily adorn the irrigated hell strip adjacent the road. If only they had used smarter choices.
Don't do this.
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
2012-01-19
Napa river walk
Juli and I had a nice vacation in northern California over New Years. We stayed in the town of Napa, which has a certain amount of appeal all on it's own, even leaving aside the fact that it's the gateway to the Napa Valley wine region. Napa celebrates its river in ways that we don't see much of here in Los Angeles.
Near the place we stayed is a 1.2 mile paved trail that runs along the Napa river.
Interesting side paths go down to the river's edge.
I think we stayed at River Pointe - a timeshare. The buildings are all mobile and the infrastructure is designed to accommodate seasonal flooding. These fences pivot as water washes by but that wasn't a concern for us: all the locals were commenting on the lack of rain when we were there.
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
Near the place we stayed is a 1.2 mile paved trail that runs along the Napa river.
Interesting side paths go down to the river's edge.
I think we stayed at River Pointe - a timeshare. The buildings are all mobile and the infrastructure is designed to accommodate seasonal flooding. These fences pivot as water washes by but that wasn't a concern for us: all the locals were commenting on the lack of rain when we were there.
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
2011-04-14
Bee road?
An astute observer on my native plant garden list suggests that this is a concept useful in the U.S.
'Bee road' plans to save key pollinators
Co-operative's Plan Bee scheme will set up corridors of wildflowers as a food-rich habitat for honeybees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths.
Back to my blog vacation.
'Bee road' plans to save key pollinators
Co-operative's Plan Bee scheme will set up corridors of wildflowers as a food-rich habitat for honeybees, hoverflies, butterflies and moths.
Back to my blog vacation.
2011-01-24
Griffith Park hikes
Until a couple weeks ago I'd never hiked Griffith Park, despite the fact that it is only a 30 minute (in the AM when traffic is low) drive to many trail heads and contains an abundance of local flora and fauna. The official narrative on Griffith Park says,
With over 4,210 acres of both natural chapparal-covered terrain and landscaped parkland and picnic areas, Griffith Park is the largest municipal park with urban wilderness area in the United States. Situated in the eastern Santa Monica Mountain range, the Park’s elevations range from 384 to 1,625 feet above see level. With an arid climate, the Park’s plant communities vary from coastal sage scrub, oak and walnut woodlands to riparian vegetation with trees in the Park’s deep canyons. The California native plants represented in Griffith Park include the California species of oak, walnut, lilac, mountain mahagony, sages, toyon, and sumac. Present, in small quantities, are the threatened species of manzanita and berberis.
Over the years recreational attractions have been developed throughout the Park, however an amazingly large portion of the Park remains virtually unchanged from the days Native American villages occupied the area's lower slopes.
All that appears to be true.
I had a plan to lead Boy Scout Troop 283 on a hike to the Hollywood sign but since I'd never been there I pre-hiked the trail with my buddy Dan. Dan and I had ideal hiking weather: cool and overcast. The following weekend I hiked the trail again with the Scouts, but the weather was warmer and I needed all the water that I brought with me. Dan was also seized by enthusiasm for Griffith Park and met the Scouts on the trail while he completed a much longer Griffith Observatory to Mt. Lee hike. Modern Hiker has a particularly nice writeup on the Hollywood sign hike that I followed both times.
View of the transmitter tower on the top of Mt. Lee, home of the Holylwood sign. The edge of the sign is barely visible in this photo, I think, below and left of the tower.
We're getting closer.
The trail is dirt access road and paved road on the upper reaches of Mt. Lee. It twists and turns through the canyons.
There! A fence separates you from the sign. It's pretty steep, so the public safety aspects of the fence seems legit.
Dan on top of nearby Mt. Cahuenga looking out to the San Fernando Valley ("The Valley" in local parlance).
I'm using high dynamic range photography whenever I can these days, as you can see below.
Surveyer's mark on Mt. Cahuenga.
Native plants grow in profusion.
Scouts on the way up.
Nice view!
On the second descent, view of Mt. Lee though sycamores.
View down to the trail below.
I'm sure I'll be back to hike some other trails soon.
With over 4,210 acres of both natural chapparal-covered terrain and landscaped parkland and picnic areas, Griffith Park is the largest municipal park with urban wilderness area in the United States. Situated in the eastern Santa Monica Mountain range, the Park’s elevations range from 384 to 1,625 feet above see level. With an arid climate, the Park’s plant communities vary from coastal sage scrub, oak and walnut woodlands to riparian vegetation with trees in the Park’s deep canyons. The California native plants represented in Griffith Park include the California species of oak, walnut, lilac, mountain mahagony, sages, toyon, and sumac. Present, in small quantities, are the threatened species of manzanita and berberis.
Over the years recreational attractions have been developed throughout the Park, however an amazingly large portion of the Park remains virtually unchanged from the days Native American villages occupied the area's lower slopes.
All that appears to be true.
I had a plan to lead Boy Scout Troop 283 on a hike to the Hollywood sign but since I'd never been there I pre-hiked the trail with my buddy Dan. Dan and I had ideal hiking weather: cool and overcast. The following weekend I hiked the trail again with the Scouts, but the weather was warmer and I needed all the water that I brought with me. Dan was also seized by enthusiasm for Griffith Park and met the Scouts on the trail while he completed a much longer Griffith Observatory to Mt. Lee hike. Modern Hiker has a particularly nice writeup on the Hollywood sign hike that I followed both times.
View of the transmitter tower on the top of Mt. Lee, home of the Holylwood sign. The edge of the sign is barely visible in this photo, I think, below and left of the tower.
There! A fence separates you from the sign. It's pretty steep, so the public safety aspects of the fence seems legit.
Surveyer's mark on Mt. Cahuenga.
Fun single track trail up Mt. Cahuenga.
Native plants grow in profusion.
On the second descent, view of Mt. Lee though sycamores.
I'm sure I'll be back to hike some other trails soon.
2010-09-03
Percolation theoretic understanding of landscape ecology
Sometimes I have good ideas. Less often those ideas are new. Given my interest in native plants as habitat, about 6 months ago I thought I would try to model wildlife migration on a grid (which would stand in for typical suburban lots) using percolation theory. However, a quick Google search turns up lots of prior work. So this is only a potentially good idea that isn't even novel.
The first article that I read was confusing on more than one level. Give the first page a read (or not) below. My guess is that you'll quickly get bogged down and skip past it.
Neutral Models: Useful Tools for Understanding Landscape Patterns
SCOTT M. PEARSON and ROBERT H. GARDNER
8.1 Introduction
A neutral model is a minimum set of rules required to generate pattern in the absence of a particular process (or set of processes) being studied. The results of the neutral model provide a means of testing the effect of the measured process on patterns that are actually observed (Caswell l976). If observed patterns do not differ from the neutral model, then the measured process has not significantly affected the observed pattern. Conversely, when results differ from model predictions in a way that is consistent with a particular process, then strong evidence for the importance of this process has been obtained. Several authors have argued that formulation of a proper neutral model is necessary for hypothesis testing, because data often exhibit nonrandom patterns in the absence of the causal mechanisms of interest (Quinn and Dunham 1983). This approach has been discussed extensively in the field of community ecology (e.g., Conner and Simberloff 1984, 1986; Haefner 1988) as well as other areas of biology (Nitecki and Hoffman 1987).
Neutral models are useful in landscape ecology, a field of ecology that emphasizes the complex relationships between landscape pattern and ecological process (Turner 1989, Gardner and O'tieill1991). Processes, such as disturbance, can produce landscape patterns by changing the abundance and location of habitat patches (Baker 1992). Likewise, patterns have important effects on ecological processes. For example, habitat fragmentation affects metapopulation dynamics (Holt et al. 1995), gene flow (Ballal et a1.1994), and dispersal (Santos and Telleria 1994). The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the usefulness of neutral models to landscape ecology by discussing how neutral models (1) assist the investigator in understanding patterns in spatial data and (2) are useful for generating maps for quantifying the effect of landscape pattern on ecological processes.
8.2 A Simple Neutral Model
Neutral models help landscape ecologists understand relationships between measures of spatial pattern and landcover abundance. A simple neutral model designed to explore the effect of changes in the abundance of a habitat on the spatial pattern of landcover (Gardner et al. 1987) was derived from the principles of percolation theory (Stauffer and Aharony 1992).
Was I right?
Even after reading this article several times, I don't have a good plain English understanding of what they are trying to say. This isn't helped by the fact that I seem to have stumbled upon a small tempest in a teapot regarding the use of a neutral model versus a null model. In population ecology and related fields, a null model seems to be a migration model fit with constraints measured from data whereas the neutral model attempts a statistically based description that can be scaled to data. I'm probably wrong, but that's what I'm going with right now.
The first article that I read was confusing on more than one level. Give the first page a read (or not) below. My guess is that you'll quickly get bogged down and skip past it.
Neutral Models: Useful Tools for Understanding Landscape Patterns
SCOTT M. PEARSON and ROBERT H. GARDNER
8.1 Introduction
A neutral model is a minimum set of rules required to generate pattern in the absence of a particular process (or set of processes) being studied. The results of the neutral model provide a means of testing the effect of the measured process on patterns that are actually observed (Caswell l976). If observed patterns do not differ from the neutral model, then the measured process has not significantly affected the observed pattern. Conversely, when results differ from model predictions in a way that is consistent with a particular process, then strong evidence for the importance of this process has been obtained. Several authors have argued that formulation of a proper neutral model is necessary for hypothesis testing, because data often exhibit nonrandom patterns in the absence of the causal mechanisms of interest (Quinn and Dunham 1983). This approach has been discussed extensively in the field of community ecology (e.g., Conner and Simberloff 1984, 1986; Haefner 1988) as well as other areas of biology (Nitecki and Hoffman 1987).
Neutral models are useful in landscape ecology, a field of ecology that emphasizes the complex relationships between landscape pattern and ecological process (Turner 1989, Gardner and O'tieill1991). Processes, such as disturbance, can produce landscape patterns by changing the abundance and location of habitat patches (Baker 1992). Likewise, patterns have important effects on ecological processes. For example, habitat fragmentation affects metapopulation dynamics (Holt et al. 1995), gene flow (Ballal et a1.1994), and dispersal (Santos and Telleria 1994). The purpose of this chapter is to demonstrate the usefulness of neutral models to landscape ecology by discussing how neutral models (1) assist the investigator in understanding patterns in spatial data and (2) are useful for generating maps for quantifying the effect of landscape pattern on ecological processes.
8.2 A Simple Neutral Model
Neutral models help landscape ecologists understand relationships between measures of spatial pattern and landcover abundance. A simple neutral model designed to explore the effect of changes in the abundance of a habitat on the spatial pattern of landcover (Gardner et al. 1987) was derived from the principles of percolation theory (Stauffer and Aharony 1992).
Was I right?
Even after reading this article several times, I don't have a good plain English understanding of what they are trying to say. This isn't helped by the fact that I seem to have stumbled upon a small tempest in a teapot regarding the use of a neutral model versus a null model. In population ecology and related fields, a null model seems to be a migration model fit with constraints measured from data whereas the neutral model attempts a statistically based description that can be scaled to data. I'm probably wrong, but that's what I'm going with right now.
2010-02-07
Beautiful weather after the rain
A storm said to be headed our way on Saturday never appeared.
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
- Posted at great expense from my iPhone
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