Drought?

There is a lot to say about Australia. So much that it is actually a little overwhelming, because I have more topics to write about than I have time to write. One thing that has been striking about our stay here so far is that it is completely failed to live up to certain expectations. Namely, it has been raining for the last five days. On term abroad, you are not supposed to have expectations, but I really could not have expected this if I tried. You'll have to take my word on this, but I am not complaining about the drenching we've received.

It would be a little selfish to hope for dry, warm weather in a continent that has been rain starved for five years now. Brisbane's dams are around 20 percent capacity and after the last bit of rain projections are up; they will now run out of fresh water in January of 2009.

To me, that is a little concerning, yet I fail to see overwhelming concern from the Australians I come into contact with. Maybe it is the "no worries" atmosphere. Four minute showers really don't cut it, though, when the crisis is this imminent. On top, I still see and hear of people watering plants. Even more ridiculous, I heard some people complaining about the rain! Apparently this rain has been the best rain they've had in quite awhile.

So what are they doing? I've mentioned the four minute shower bit. I think most people probably follow that pretty well. People are also installing grey water systems and storage tanks when possible. Low flow shower heads are also popular. Everywhere I've been they've had controls as to whether you want a half-flush or a full-flush and toilets have tanks that are way up in the air so the water can rush your excrement away with as little water as possible. People have a limit of 120 L per day, which seems like more than enough if people worked at it a little.

The city is installing desalinization plants and will also be installing treatment plants that recycle the water. Exactly what this means is unclear, but I fear the worst. No Brisbaner has been able to tell me exactly what water is recycled, but I don't think they have separate lines for toilet water and gray water. Either way, Brisbaners do seem to know that the water meets "the highest" quality standards. That's good to know. It's also good to see incomplete recycled water lines across the river from me - the recycling bit won't be done until after I leave. A bit of a relief.

**SHORT INTERLUDE ABOUT THE REST OF NORTH STRADBROKE

North Stradbroke fits into this post, because most of the soaking we've received so far was on the island (it's been raining since Tuesday and we left the island Friday). On the island, after the marine portion, we looked into some terrestrial ecology. I guess the main part of that was learning about rainforest and sclerophyl vegetation. I hope to go into a little more detail about that later, but, in short, sclerophyl vegetation, such as eucalyptus, is a type of vegetation that has very thick, woody leaves that are well adapted to dry, nutrient choked soils. Australia has very nutrient starved soils.

On the field trips, one of the exercises we had was to do a "Species Area Curve." Basically, we start by counting the number of distinct species in a 1 x 1 meter plot of land, then a 2 x2 meter plot, then a 4 x 4 meter plot and so on. So if in the first quadrat we count four species and the next we have two new species, we have four then six (they add). Plotting the number of species versus the length of the quadrat is a way of estimating the total number of species in a region, because eventually the curve reaches a horizontal asymptote. There is some interesting mathematics to think about that I will probably try to work out on the train ride; we are plotting number of species versus length of quadrat, instead of number of species versus quadrat area, which seems odd. Anyways, in both cases the graph kind of climbs up and hits a wall, which tells us the total number of species. An approximate graph of what this looks like is below. As it flattens out at the top that is the "wall," which marks the number of species.



So anyways, we did all of this work, enthusiastically in our rain gear in the rain for three straight days. Personally, I thought it was better than being stuck in a classroom, but I think others had a different opinion. The picture at the very top of the blog is the day before the rain hit us, when we got to go to the beach and the picture below is Amanda and I on the bus in between rainy forests (not quite rainforests).




**INTERLUDE COMPLETE

So, in all, I'm glad for the rain, even though it really doesn't effect me. I think water scarcity will be the biggest problems for my generation and I'm glad that large metropolitans in first world countries are coping, because it gives hope that maybe some of the third world countries will be able to cope. Maybe. Anyways, I'll be back in New York with our plentiful water in no time.