Thoughts on Orange Beach Alabama

Everything I observed in Orange Beach, Alabama was colored by my experiences as a frequent visitor to the North Carolina coast and to the Brunswick County beaches in particular. In North Carolina high rise condos are rare. A quick internet search revealed only two: Grand Villas in Indian Beach and Atlantic Towers in Carolina Beach. Most developed beaches in North Carolina feature family beach cottages, the largest usually three stories, usually behind the first dune. Also, in North Carolina, the “dry sand” area (from high tide to the dunes) of all beaches belong to the public. The “wet sand” area and the surf belong to the state. It is impossible to privately own a beach in North Carolina, although developers and individuals try to get around this law from time to time. One such case is Figure Eight Island. The entire Island is private and can be accessed by car only by crossing a guarded causeway bridge. Uninvited guests can only walk the beach after swimming across the short inlet from Wrightsville Beach. Here is a good description of North Carolina’s public beach law, with references.

In South Carolina gated communities are allowed to have exclusive access to a beach, most notably in Hilton Head. I have visited beaches in Myrtle Beach that were nominally public, but the pattern of private ownership and road networks allowed no place for the public to park. North Carolina, or at least Long Beach, where I often visit, does a good job of distributing small public parking lots among the private parcels.

In an hour of internet searching, I was unable to find much real information about the beaches of Alabama, Mississippi, and the Florida panhandle. Is it possible to privately own a beach on the US Gulf coast?  Some developments (such as Romar House, which I will get to later) use the term “private beach” in their advertising, but the real meaning is unclear. And I assume some renourishment is ongoing, but how much and how often?

The Florida Department of Environmental Protection extols the benefits of beach renourishment, but does not give details about where and how often it is carried out.

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management appears to be the primary management agency for the beaches in that state, but their website presents no information about renourishment and focuses primarily on water quality issues. Here is another opinion about beach development and renourishment from the infamous coastal geologist Orrin Pilkey.

 My wife and I took our kids and spent New Year’s Eve weekend in Orange Beach, Alabama. The oceanfront of Orange Beach consists almost entirely of high-rise condos, with perhaps a half dozen beach cottages in the mix, along state highway 182. Just beyond the chain of strip malls on the inland side of the highway lies the 6,150 acre Gulf State Park. The Park punches through to the beach at two points along the strip of condos, and at the western point the Park runs along the beach for two entire undeveloped miles. Gulf State park provides not only ample parking for the public, but showers and bathrooms as well.

We stayed at a very affordable condo at the western end of Cotton Bayou adjacent to the other (eastern) Gulf State Park beach access. The Bayou is connected to the Gulf of Mexico by Perdido Pass, not far from the AL/FL state line. One day we saw a dolphin splashing in the bayou. We also saw great blue herons and an Osprey.

We visited friends who were staying at the Pheoxix IV condos, in the middle of the strip. Here is a picture of the swimming pool from the balcony of the fourteenth floor.

 When I saw this, I was immediately reminded of the logo for the Rebel Alliance from the Star Wars movies:

This image of Luke Skywalker comes from a website devoted to Star Wars helmets.

Most of the condos left exterior lights on after dark. In North Carolina, this is a big no-no, as it confuses the sea turtles. Even if the sea turtles came ashore, however, they would not have access to the dunes, for they were all fenced off. But the turtles did of course have easy access to the two miles of beach at Gulf State Park, just down the road.

Here is a picture of the afore-mentioned Romar House, just next door to the Phoenix IV, at dusk. Note that the exterior lights are on. But also, more noteworthy to me anyway, is the sign, several meters out from their boardwalk, claiming the beach as private property.

 And here is a shot of the same sign in context from above, with some children (some of whom are my children) included for scale:

So whose beach is it?

I don't have anything against beach condos, really. I suppose their density allows more people to experience the beach than is the case in North Carolina. I marvel at how they stay in place that close to the water. Why don't they sink? This was only my third trip to the Gulf Coast and I probably got a few things wrong in this report. I look forward to going back and learning more about the area.

More Thoughts on Google Street View

I don't play video games, unless you count Google Earth Street View. For me, GESV is a fun way to explore landscapes and think about configuration and form. The quest for images with strong composition and interesting subject matter is a scavenger hunt. The moment of discovery is the reward. In rural areas, I am looking for interesting forms. In urban areas I am usually looking for life in the street, which usually means people. One of the principal problems discussed in Landscape Architecture is how to bring life to the street. Designing cities for people is the focus of New Urbanism and groups like The Project for Public Spaces. In our landscape architecture classes we discuss walkability, sense of place, and read a lot of stuff by Peter Calthorpe, Andres Duany and Kevin Lynch. It's all about people in public space and the human experience of spaces. Generally, nice photographs of public space or street space features lots of people experiencing the space. In Landscape Architecture magazine, Landscape Architects become perplexed when the public fails to utilize a well-designed space or when a poorly designed space gets a lot of use. I remember a particular example of a simple field of artificial turf, but I don't have time at the moment to track it down.

Google Earth Street View shows you the other side, the reality (of a sort). Drop in from the Google Earth Eye of God into any street grid and chances are you will find it empty. If you peruse randomly, it could be a very long time before you see any people at all. If you do this often enough, you develope a sense of what configuration of streets are more likely to yield human forms. Grid or wagon-wheel configurations, usually indicating the oldest part of the city, are generally better candidates. The professors always tell us "pay attention to the corners," and this holds true in GE, especially corners near open space. Areas along rivers, or, more likely, a block or two from the river, are good candidates. I believe GESV could be used in an exercise in a Landscape Architecture class. The instructor could present the student with a short list of things to find: somebody sitting down, somebody on a bicycle, a child under twelve, etc. The student would learn to recognize from the air how to "read" the landscape, find the mass transit system, the arteries, and the nodes.

Here is a blog in which someone has found a little story in the street in GE Street View. A woman is walking and trips and falls. If you look closely, you can see the chunk of rock that she tripped on. She stays on all fours for a moment but eventually stands up. Yesterday you could see her quite clearly, but today, perhaps because the internet found out about her, it appears that Google has pixellated her. More interesting (to me anyway) is that this is a street with a surprising amount of life in it. In fact, if you continue down the street, you find eleven more people sitting on the sidewalk. They appear to be a little scruffy, as if sitting on the sidewalk is about all they have been doing and all they intend to do for the day. Some of them are watching the woman trip and fall. It is a little vignette played out on a street in Brazil. Perhaps not exactly the kind of 'life" the urban planners want, but it is alive.

More Google Earth Street View Images

Sometimes at the end of the day I like to take a break and tour the world via Google Earth Street View. Harvesting Street View images is an idea I got from Jon Rafman, the grand master. It's hard to explain why I like doing this so much. I sense a thrill of discovery, also a drive to explore the world, to understand geography, sense of place, and also to identify interesting material and then compose the shot. I use minimal zooming functions and no photo retouches. I previously posted a collection of harvested images last march. Several months later, I have a new batch. I've been to the Brazilian countryside, the north coast of Norway, Romania, some bedroom community of Denver, the cathedral at Reims, and Baltimore. I could try to talk you through them, but I think it is more fun to mix them all up like a deck of cards and just let you at them. However, I can't resist a few captions. As always, if you want 'em bigger, click on 'em.

My OCD is mad that I did not center this one better.

In the television series "The Wire," these abandoned row houses are sometimes portrayed as metaphorical tombstones. In Street View, I peruse them hoping to find something interesting in the open windows. A home run would be a person looking back. I found these pigeons in one and said "that'll do!"

Many many blocks of these abandoned row houses can be found in Baltimore.

You might guess Baltimore but this is actually Philadelphia.

The Center of the World.

Not sure what's going on here but they seem to have more dirt than they need.

This is their front yard, where they hang out. What makes this picture really great is the fact that there is something green in the planter.

Automatic face blur working one third of the time here.

Campfire site at the end of a road in Norway.

A Day in Longleaf Country

    One really neat thing about being a doctoral student in the Department of Geosciences is getting the opportunity to participate in projects that involve traveling to other parts of the state and doing science. I have been to the piney woods of Mississippi only once before, when I went with my Graduate Studio 2 class (in Landscape Architecture) to visit the studios of the late Ed Blake, Landscape Architect, in Hattiesburg. Before moving to Mississippi I read Looking for Longleaf: The Fall and Rise of An American Forest  by Lawrence Earley, an excellent and thorough description of the natural and cultural history of the longleaf system and an informative introduction to the challenging dynamics of landscape level ecological conservation. Earley's book describes the various impressions that the vast pine savanna made on the first European visitors, whose descriptions of the landscape as spooky, lonesome, and desolate alternate with expressions of admiration for its peaceful, verdant beauty. You can find some good information about the longleaf system at this website from the NRCS.

     My chance to return to the piney woods came about when I agreed to help another graduate student set up an experiment that involves measuring soil moisture in a catchment of the Black Creek in the De Soto National Forest. We installed a datalogger that receives soil moisture data by radio from five moisture readers every 12 hours. Each reader is connected to two probes, so the data logger is receiving information about ten discrete spots in five separate locations. Cheryl, the student researcher, plans to come to the site once a month to collect the data from the logger. The logger also has a rain gauge.

On the way down we stopped at the NRCS service center in Meridian and I noticed this sign for the Lauderdale Agri-Center, an equestrian facility managed by Lauderdale County next door.  I snapped this photo for a sense of place: Lauderdale County is not afraid of the Name of Jesus.

This is the forest in which we spent the day. Here is a mature longleaf pine next to what I believe is a shortleaf pine (but could be loblolly). The forest is a mix of different pines and longleaf is by no means dominant. The understory is mostly yaupon holly, inkberry holly, and wax myrtle. It also features various small oaks (I call them turkey oaks), bay magnolia and various species of Vaccinium, including the quite large sparkleberry (Vaccinium arboreum) along the stream bank. I think I saw some anise (Illicium parviflorum) but I am not sure. We found plenty of blackberry and some (infrequent) Japanese honeysuckle. We saw the evil Cogon grass on the roadside as we drove in, but none in the area in which we were working. It is a wonderful landscape to hang out in, especially on an unseasonably warm and sunny day as we had.

     Longleaf pine spends the first several years of its life as a short, bristly shrub as seen in this picture. The needles insulate the cambium from the fires that were frequent before European settlement. Under a natural fire regime, all of the groundstory vegetation mentioned above would be replaced by grasses and forbes.

We dug a hole in sandy soil on the ridge top to place the data logger. As you can see it was in several pieces and we assembled it on site. Cheryl is using the GPS on her phone to get the lat/long coordinates.

Here the data logger is assembled, receiving power from the solar panel and receiving soil moisture information from the probes. Cheryl can confirm that all is working properly by logging the data in her laptop.

Here is one of the soil moisture readers installed a few hundred meters from the data logger. It sends the data from the two probes to the data logger by radio. The manufacturer claims that the signal range is three miles. We did not test it that far. At each site we took a soil sample with a large auger and Cheryl identified the soil type.

These last two shots are of the Black Creek, a federally designated wild and scenic river. USFS manages a trail and some campsites along the stream. It is a floatable river, and a local company offers canoe rentals. I was very impressed by the white sand on the banks and on the natural levees. I was also impressed by how much more birdsong I could hear down in the creek compared to on the ridge top. The stream is on the northern edge of the National Forest, but the area is undeveloped. The entire day I heard no traffic (except one or two cars), no airplanes, nothing but the wind and a few birds. Down in the creek I heard the water gurgling, both a deep woofer gurgle and the treble notes of the riffles. And woodpeckers. I plan to return with the family and maybe some innertubes when the weather gets warmer.

Vermont Couple Builds Tiny House

Everyday people build a tiny house at the end of their driveway and blog about it. The blog includes a public spreadsheet of the costs, and lots of tips on how to get it done. This is just the kind of thing I would very much like to do at my house. Some day.

My Take on The GIS: Tool or Science Question

I am trying to write an end-of-the semester paper and am going over some ideas from an old class and came across this paper. I thought it was pretty good. Read on if you want to take in your humble blogger's thoughts on science, knowledge and GIS.

The Status of Geographical Information Systems in Academia

By Toby Gray

GR 8990

Philosophy and Ethics in Geography

March 23, 2011

     The computational power and graphic capabilities of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have brought dramatic changes to geography and allied fields, just as the wider so-called “digital revolution” has profoundly changed human civilizations worldwide. Complex operations in spatial statistics, such as kriging, to take one example, which in the pre-digital age required advanced technical knowledge and laborious, time-consuming effort, can now be done by anyone instantly. These technical advances promulgate new questions of appropriateness, privilege, map interpretation and epistemological assumptions. The basic questions have been around for a long time in the disciplines of geography, cartography, landscape architecture, ecology and allied fields. The complex and dynamic epistemological environment created by the technological advances of GIS constitute a new field of knowledge appropriate for advanced study. We have moved well beyond the notion, discussed by Wright et al. (1997) and Goodchild (1992), that GIS is a mere software package appropriate only in an undergraduate curriculum for students who want to apply it to the science of geography.

     As a new technology in the process of expansion and homesteading in new intellectual fields and territories, the ontological status of GIS within the academy is still undetermined. As external entities, particularly governmental agencies, demand more GIS-based products, the funding status of GIS seems sound. But where does GIS fit in an academic institution? As an area of technical expertise? As a unit within geography? Or as an emerging autonomous science breaking away from her more established cousins, much like geography in the 1880s?

     These questions have been addressed in a number of papers in terms of a “tool or science” debate. This debate actually informs and advances a larger debate about the ontological status of science more than it demystifies the ontological status of GIS. This paper will argue that the answer to the “tool or science” question depends on how one defines those terms, a very tricky problem in and of itself. I will argue that many geographers, leery of being associated with expressions of positivism, define science so broadly that, in the end, nothing is science. I will advocate for a strict, positivist definition of science, one that relegates GIS to the tool category. I will also assert that mathematics and languages are also tools and that tools have primacy over science and are therefore certainly worthy of post-graduate study.

     In order to determine whether GIS is a tool or a science one must first define the terms “tool” and “science.” Pickles (1997) takes Wright et al. (1997) to task for failing to adequately define “science,” ignoring that fact that they don’t even attempt to define “tool.” The problem, of course, is that any attempt to define “science” involves the writer in thorny, centuries-old philosophical debates. These debates have taken on a sharper focus in the last few decades due to the post-modernist, or deconstructivist, critique of the more excessive claims of positivism, and to efforts by “human geographers” to expand the field of science to include more dynamic and meaningful kinds of epistemologies. When Wright et al. (1997) do define “science,” they do so in the context of disassociating science with positivist expression, resulting in a definition that could conceivably include the arts and sciences. Goodchild (2000), by contrast, in an unambiguously positivistic stroke, includes an image of Pieter Brueghel’s “The Tower of Babel” (1563) with his essay and ends on an unapologetically positivistic note regarding the capabilities of digital spatial technology for the creation of “a new Tower of Babel, to be created by a conscious effort to overcome problems of communication.”

A Broad Definition of Science Makes Everything a Tool

     Goodchild (2000) is virtually alone in his willingness to express faith in the power of quantifiable fields of data and logical processes, the structure of GIS, to solve problems and advance civilization in any meaningful way. Wright et al. (1997) mention that GIS is perceived by some as “positivisms second coming” and by others as “a last-ditch rally by positivism’s battered survivors.” It is amusing to wonder where Goodchild is in this scenario. We should also note that Goodchild is a co-auther of the Wright et al. (1997) paper.

Wright et al. (1997) are more cautious when it comes to associations with positivist expression. They doubt that a concise definition of science is even possible. Science, they say “encompasses a wide range of fields that differ widely from each other in philosophy, knowledge content, and methodology.” They offer one definition of the term “science” as “shorthand for a logical and systematic approach to problems that seeks generalizable answers.” In their conclusion they note “older notions of science as the equivalent of “hard science” are being replaced by a more open view.” They mention Johnston’s (1986) view of science as “the pursuit of systematic and formulated knowledge, and as such [it] is not confined to any particular epistemology.”

     The problem with such definitions is that they don’t exclude the arts and humanities, which are also “systematic and formulated.” Scholars in literary criticism, history or comparative literature do not employ symbol-based formulas to the degree that scientists do, but their individual works of scholarship do not exist in a vacuum either. On the contrary, scholarship in the arts and humanities are nestled within paradigms (Marxist, Freudian, deconstructivist, etc.,) that can and do constrain methods to the point that the methods become every bit as “formulated” as those used by scientists.

     Pushing the boundary between arts and sciences in this direction is a consequence of the critique of positivist methodologies by “human” geographers. It is an aspect of the tension between qualitative and quantitative researchers that characterizes the field of geography today. It is related to the deconstructivist (or post-modernist) dismantling of modernism in other areas of academia during the past several decades. Expanding geography to include human, or psychological, experiences of places in order to explore the “meaning” or “sense” of place may be an admirable goal. But doing so while maintaining strongly that geography is a true science allows for anything that can be studied systematically (virtually everything taught at a major research university) to be considered a science, GIS included. To those of us who still hold that objectivity and verifiability are possible, and that these concepts have a special and attractive potency when it comes to solving problems, this broad definition of science is not welcome news. We worry along with Anne Godlewska as quoted in Harley (1990) that “literature has come to history, unfurling her circus silks of metaphor and allegory, misprision and aporia, trace and sign, demanding that historians accept her mocking presence right at the heart of what they  once insisted was their own autonomous and truly scientific discipline.” If she can do it to history, she can do it to us.

     If every systematic epistemology is science, then science looses its particular status, and, in effect, there is no science. We might as well consider everything a tool. In the simplest epistemological matrix there is the subject, a self-aware observer, and an external object, and everything in between constitutes a collection of tools by which the subject attempts to understand or apprehend the object. The five senses are tools. All epistemological systems are tools. Dreams, prayers, and memories are tools that yield profound yet difficult-to-asses information. Science is a tool used by humans to apprehend external reality. An established hard science, like geology, for example, does not generate any data by itself, but rather observes natural phenomena in order to get data. “Doing geology” means looking at data in light of a particular body of knowledge with a particular history and a particular set of assumptions and thereby transforming data into information. Geologists, then, are using the “tool” of geology to make defensible statements about the processes of the earth.

A Strict Definition of Science

     Lutus (2008) writes as if the idea that mathematics is not a pure science is arrived at by pure ignorance. Actually, serious discussions about the status of mathematics, centered on the fact that it is essentially theoretical rather than empirical, have been around for a long time. The discussion appears in Entrikin’s (1984) article about Carl O. Sauer in which he discusses Thomas C. Chamberlin’s inversion of the Comtean hierarchy of sciences. According to Entrikin, Chamberlin and Sauer viewed mathematical equations and theoretical constructions as tentative and instrumental. According to this viewpoint, the real purpose for mathematics is to aid in the discovery and accumulation of facts. Whenever empirical science discovers facts that contradict the speculations of the theoretical sciences, the tangible evidence takes priority. Chamberlin and Sauer did not deny that physics and mathematics are sciences, they were merely asserting the primacy of empiricism. Lutus (2008) in turn inverts Chamberlin and Sauer by asserting that nature speaks in mathematics, descriptions of nature depend on mathematics “completely,” and mathematics is, therefore, as Carl Friedich Gauss put it, “the queen of the sciences.”

     Lutus (2008) asserts that mathematics possesses “all the key elements of science, e.g. theory, evidence and falsifiability.” He paradoxically, then, acknowledges that mathematics is capable of saying things that are conclusively true, “without the possibility of later refutation”. He calls this a “distinction between mathematics and the other sciences – in mathematics, you can construct a true or false statement, while in the other sciences you can only construct statements that are either probably true or definitely false.” When it comes to the mathematical proof, no amount of evidence gathered can ever falsify the proof, because the proof meets the standards for validity established by mathematics. Lutus believes this aspect makes mathematics a better kind of science, whereas I think it crosses an important dividing line between science and non-science.

     Incidentally, falsification also occurs in the arts and humanities. The critical difference is that discredited ideas never really go away. Symbolism and Freudianism may be out of fashion now, but both frameworks are dynamic enough and have enough persuasive power to sustain a core of adherents. Since science and the arts and humanities interact unceasingly through history, new discoveries and developments may cause these discarded methods to rise again in new forms. The geocentric universe, on the other hand, is gone for good.

     Lutus makes the legitimate claim that mathematical concepts are ubiquitous in nature. He presents the fact that cicadas have gained an evolutionary advantage by appearing in swarms on 13 and 17 year cycles. Predators that appear in shorter yearly intervals are less likely to encounter cicadas on a regular basis, since 13 and 17 are prime numbers and therefore impossible to synchronize temporally with shorter annual cycles. The species is unknowingly, through the algorithm of evolution, taking advantage of a numerical property, and our understanding of that property (the fact that prime numbers are divisible only by themselves and one), helps us to understand nature. Lutus quotes Richard Feynman on this point: nature speaks to us in mathematics.

     I agree that nature speaks to us in mathematics. Spanish people speak to us in Spanish. Russian people speak to us in Russian. But Spanish and Russian are not sciences and neither is mathematics. All three are systematic, organized and highly complex symbol systems that allow us to code, transmit and understand information about the outside world. All of these are tools. Tools don’t generate their own phenomena or data. Tools are, however, instrumental in transforming data into information. Science transforms information into knowledge.

     One could argue that the sciences, biology, chemistry, geology, etc, do not generate their own phenomena or data either. They just observe external reality within the context of their particular paradigms. This argument brings us back to the notion that everything is a tool. Basically, if everything is science, then nothing is science. If everything is a tool, then nothing is science. If we want to have something that we call “science” and have such a thing be distinct from “tools,” we must define both terms rather sharply.

A narrow definition of science would emphasize that conclusive proofs are not possible, that new data become available constantly, and theories may have to be adjusted or abandoned. Quantification and validation (along with their acknowledged limitations) are at the core, and questions of human value, meaning and qualitative assessment, while ever-present, inhabit the fuzzy boundaries between the sciences, allied disciplines, and the arts and humanities. All academic scholarship, whether in the fields of art, science, or humanities, should be in a constant dialogue. All are essential to the purposes of the academy and the improvement of humankind. There is no hierarchy in this view.

     Except for one thing: I would put the tools on top. I agree with Lutus (2008) that nature speaks in mathematics and that science is completely dependent on mathematics. Mathematics should drape the sciences and foreign languages (or linguistics) should drape the humanities. Knowing anything well involves knowing the expressive power of multiple codes. GIS is one of the most powerful intellectual tools to come along in the past century, and, as part of the digital revolution, is changing human civilization forever. GIS is a dynamic platform by which spatial statistics can be transmitted graphically in the form of maps. These maps can be online, interactive, and updated in real-time using remotely-sensed data. Anyone familiar with the technology will find the dreams and speculations of GIS experts from 15 years ago to be very interesting in light of all that has been accomplished since. The next 15 years are going to be just as exciting. Academic institutions must not only understand the dynamic possibilities offered by this corner of the digital revolution, they must also actively create new possibilities and new technologies. The “tool or science” debate is actually one about philosophical paradigms. However GIS is perceived in that sense, its status as a field of knowledge capable of significant contributions to science should not be doubted.

Works Discussed:

Entrikin, J. Nicholas. 1984. Carl O. Sauer, philosopher in spite of himself. The Geographical Review 74:4.

Goodchild, M. F., 1992: Geographical Information Science. International Journal of Geographical Information Systems, 6, 31–46.

Goodchild, M. F., 2000: Communicating Geographic Information in a Digital Age. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 90, 344–355.

Harley, J. B., 1990: Cartography, Ethics, and Social Theory. Cartographica, 27, 1–23.

Lutus, P., 2008: Is Mathematics a Science? Unpublished work available online at http://www.arachnoid.com/is_math_a_science/index.html

Pickles, J., 1997: Tool or Science? GIS, Technoscience, and the Theoretical Turn. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87, 363–372.

Wright, D. J., M. F. Goodchild, and J. D. Proctor, 1997: GIS: Tool or Science? Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 87, 346–362.

Bad news from North Carolina. While working quickly to suppress what sounds to me like a major fire, crews plowed under a section of Sandy Run Savannas State Natural Area known to contain a number of rare and endangered plants. Hard to find who to blame here. The key is to know as much as you can about your habitat so that you can think fast in an emergency -or have protocols in place so that you don't have to think.