Hydrology Haikus

Three haikus inspired by some recent reading:

Is streamflow changing?
Natural variation
makes this question hard.

Field measures, models,
Please give me the same numbers.
It works on paper.

Plants, fire, water.
Each one affects the other.
A fragile balance.

G.B. March 2014

All Dry on the Western Front

It is summer in December

Grass is brown, the sky is blue.

It is summer in December

And we don’t know what to do.

On the East Coast it’s all buried

In a blanket cold and white.

Here our skis are hitting gravel;

Were that all, we’d be all right.

But snow banks won’t be granting loans

Once real summer rolls around

And the farmers take a crack at

Growing crops in bone dry ground.

Reservoirs are sprouting ghost towns

While the hills nearby are bare.

If levels stay below the norm

Well, we’ll have to learn to share.

Fish are fighting versus farmers,

Or at least that’s what they say.

What’s the water gonna go to?

Flushing toilets? Growing hay?

All the Californians dreaming

Of horizons growing dark;

Trying to ignore this prospect:

Dry hills lit with just one spark.

True, we all did choose to live here;

Raise our cattle, dig our pools.

But I’m sure we’ll think of something,

We poor desert-dwelling fools.

It is summer in December

Grass is brown, the sky is blue

It is summer in December

And we don’t know what to do

Written by G.B. shortly after the end of 2013, the driest year in California’s history.

Haber-Bosch

N.

Nitrogen.

Element Number 7.

7 billion people.

We may not have reached that number

Without nitrogen.

 

The world was set to starve;

The earth could not sustain us;

So you turned to the air

(Not so thin, after all)

And plucked out nitrogen.

You fertilized the fields and we survived.

 

This new magic seemed harmless.

What comes from the air

Couldn’t have a price.

But like the magician’s apprentice

We didn’t know when to stop,

And the fields literally overflowed.

 

Who could have predicted

The blue babies,

Too full of nitrogen to breathe?

Or the ocean’s dead zones,

Where nutrients upset the balance

And sucked oxygen from the water?

 

You fed so many,

And never meant to poison the mothers

And starve the fishermen.

Some roads to hell are paved with good inventions.

But roads can be diverged

And the apprentices are learning.

 

–G.B.

 

I became interested in the Haber-Bosch process for creating artificial fertilizers after hearing this Radiolab podcast: http://www.radiolab.org/2012/jan/09/how-do-you-solve-problem-fritz-haber/ .  The podcast explores the moral ambiguities around Fritz Haber, but not the environmental consequences, which I also mention in the poem.  Some quick overviews of the issues I allude to can be found here:

http://www.cop.noaa.gov/stressors/pollution/

http://www.nitrogennews.com/nitrogen-media-advisory-3132012/

Geophysical Globe

I created this design for a T-shirt contest.  It didn’t win, but I had fun making it and thought I would share it here.  -G.B.

Green Strawberry

Fluorescein is used as a tracer to measure dispersion in natural waterways. Sometimes a stronger dose than necessary is accidentally added, as shown here, leading to a frightening-looking but harmless color display as happened here in Strawberry Creek.

Green Strawberry Waterfall

Fluorescein is used as a tracer to measure dispersion in natural waterways. Sometimes a stronger dose than necessary is accidentally added, as shown here, leading to a frightening-looking but harmless color display as happened here in Strawberry Creek.

Green Strawberry Pipe

Fluorescein is used as a tracer to measure dispersion in natural waterways. Sometimes a stronger dose than necessary is accidentally added, as shown here, leading to a frightening-looking but harmless color display as happened here in Strawberry Creek.

Ode to Kriging

I like to krige the whole day through

Make estimates that are brand new.

Hydrologists have attitude

Estimators, exactitude.

Ack heterogeneity!

No worries, stationarity!

Covariance has potential:

Gaussian or exponential?

Least squares guesses are moronic

Kriging works on fields ergodic.

Covariance, we like to say,

Makes all your troubles go away.

So if you’re lost in 202

We hope these lines will see you through!

-Written in May 2012 by a subset of students in CE 202A: Vadose Zone Hydrology, at UC Berkeley

Fire and Water

This poem was inspired by my research on the Illilouette Creek Basin in Yosemite, studying whether allowing fires to burn naturally (rather than extinguishing wildfires whenever possible) can increase the amount of streamflow produced within a watershed.  It’s not technically a sonnet, but I’m sure the world will forgive me.

It has been shown that right after strong fire

The rivers nearby may start flowing much higher.

                                          —

But what if you change the whole fire regime?

The many small flares, they may act as a team,

To form a new balance ‘tween growth and decay

Which makes water flow in a whole different way

                                        —

And if this new equilibrium proves

To alter the way that a water drop moves

And make it stay down in the ground for much longer

Then that makes the “let it burn” argument stronger.

                                       —

I wouldn’t say it’s much exaggeration

To say this could save our state from dehydration.

-G.B. (2013)