Author: Mark

Outdoor Recreation, Travel

Two Days in Tayrona

Mark

Background:

Parque Nacional Natural Tayrona, casually known as Tayrona, is a popular tourist attraction on the Atlantic coast of Colombia. So after arriving in the nearby coastal city of Barranquilla, we spent 2 days in Tayrona for an easy start to our Colombian adventure.

About Tayrona:

Tayrona, is the crown jewel of Colombia’s national park system. The park protects coral reefs, spectacular beaches, and a coastal forest.

Me on one of the many beaches in Tayrona.

A visit to the beach during my 2 days in Tayrona

There are also several indigenous communities inside the park. Tourists are not allowed to visit them, but many people from the communities work in the park as vendors.

Getting There:

To get there, we took a bus from Santa Marta to the park entrance.

What We Did:

We entered the park on September 16, 2022 and left on the 17th. To get there, we took a bus from Santa Marta to the entrance. At the entrance, we bought park passes and made reservations to spend the night in hammocks, then took a shuttle down a dirt road into the park. From the end of the road was an hour and a half hike to the campsite. The hike was surprisingly difficult, with several rocky ascents, large sections of loose sand and, of course, intense heat and humidity. For those who found the hike too difficult, the park had horses available to take people to their campsite and to popular areas within the park. But it was not necessary for us, and eventually we made it to the campground.

Our campground in Tayrona.

The campground was located in a clearing in the forest and was quite nice. In addition to hammocks, it had tents and even cabins with electricity available for people who like to travel luxuriously. It also had showers, a restaurant, a kitchen, a general store, and a luggage storage area. Since Tayrona is warm all year, most of the buildings were open-air shelters with roofs, but they were still quite comfortable. After putting our backpacks in the luggage storage area, we hiked to the beach. 

The beaches were full of people swimming and sunbathing. There were also restaurants and vendors selling fruits, both along the trails and on the beaches. On the beaches, there were places to rent snorkel gear to see the reefs and we even saw a dive boat full of SCUBA divers. While swimming in the water, we met people from all around the world, with most people coming from other parts of Colombia, followed by tourists from Europe.

While drying out on the beach, Gabe and I talked to one family from Bogotá for a while. They were two parents and their college-aged son. They were on vacation in Tayrona and had approached us because they recognized our United States accents and the son, David, had just graduated from a university in the U.S. He studied agricultural engineering, so we talked about plants for a bit, then they gave us a long list of places we needed to visit in Bogotá. After about 30 minutes, we parted ways without exchanging contact information.

We spent a few more hours walking from beach to beach, then headed back to our campground once it started to get dark. The restaurant in our campground was cooking a big meal of pasta and vegetables for the campground, but Gabe and I opted to save some money and cook some ramen and vegetables we brought in the camp’s kitchen. They took a lot longer to cook than expected on the tiny alcohol stove I brought, so as soon as we were finished eating we went to sleep in our hammocks.

The next day, we ate breakfast at the restaurant, spent a few more hours on the beach, then hiked back the way we came and took a shuttle out of the park. From there, it was easy to catch a bus back to Santa Marta.

Lessons from Tayrona:

In addition to the spectacular landscapes in Tayrona, it really shines because of its infrastructure. Tayrona, like most national parks in the United States, is not a wilderness escape where you can expect to go days without seeing other people. Rather, it is a place where many people from around the world go to appreciate its beauty in the company of others. While like many national parks in the United States, Tayrona often sees thousands of visitors per day, it remains both comfortable and accessible. This is due to its transportation infrastructure and the type of accommodation offered, and I think national parks in the United States could learn a few lessons from Tayrona.

In the United States, I have waited in traffic for hours to enter a national park, only to struggle to find parking upon making it inside. Tayrona circumvents the problem entirely by having no roads in the park, nor does there seem to be any parking near the park. It seems the expectation is that visitors with cars are expected to leave their cars in Santa Marta or another nearby town, then take the bus into the park.

This model gets rid of the traffic issue and makes the park easier to access, since visiting the park does not require a car. While many national parks in the United States do have their own shuttle systems, they have been inadequate in my experience, not running very often and/or often having long waits. (Yeah I’m talking about you, Zion, that time I made it to the shuttle station at 5 am and still had to wait in line for 3 hours)

A traffic jam in Yellowstone. Also about one bus’s worth of people (Image courtesy of the National Parks Service).

By excluding cars from the park, there is no need to devote space to parking. Doing so saves a lot of space, and makes the park a lot more comfortable for people traveling on foot. Granted, this strategy only works because the area of the park open to visitors is really small. Still, even large national parks are traversed by only a few roads which often loop together, making it very easy to create a bus system that can efficiently transport visitors to any point in the park.

Many national parks are in remote areas and many people choose to drive to reach them. Rather than taking their cars into the park, they could simply park their cars in a massive parking lot outside the park, then take the bus inside. Personally, I would rather have a mega parking lot just outside the national park as opposed to inside. And removing cars does not mean making national parks inaccessible to people with mobility issues. It simply means taking the bus to reach paved trails or making the paved trails start at the entrance to the parks.

The second thing that makes Tayrona great is its accommodations. As I mentioned earlier, there are a few tiers of accommodation ranging from a hammock to a cabin with electricity. These simpler accommodations like hammocks serve to lower the cost of visiting and reduce the amount of specialized equipment needed to visit.

Based on my experience, accommodations in national parks in the United States consist of lodges and camping. The lodges, not surprisingly, are quite expensive. But even camping has a number of hidden costs.

Camping, while itself relatively inexpensive, requires one to bring a tent, a sleeping mat, and a sleeping pad at the absolute minimum, things which can be quite pricey. And while I love to camp and do so regularly, the gear is a large barrier to entry for someone who does not camp often. By contrast, one does not need to bring much of anything to spend the night in the hammocks in Tayrona, since the campsites and accommodations already provide everything you need.

Hammocks, however, are only comfortable in warm weather and would not work in much of the United States. But in cold areas, hammocks could easily be substituted for other budget accommodations like cabins with hostel-style bunk rooms. Doing so would go a long way in making visiting national parks in the United States both more comfortable and more accessible. And adding budget accommodations does not mean the end of camping, as the two are not mutually exclusive. National parks could easily offer both campsites and shared budget accommodations.

Do not be mistaken, I love the national parks here in the United States and they have long been a model for the world. I am simply pointing out ways they can be made even better. Our national parks in the United States are currently so great that they have been experiencing record visitation in the past few years, and learning a few lessons from Tayrona will help them continue to provide great experiences for increasing numbers of visitors.

Changing World, Environment, Travel

Adventures in Monterrey, Mexico

Mark

Background:

In just under 2 weeks, I’ll leave for a 6 month backpacking trip in South America. I have spent the past 10 months studying Spanish and preparing physically, and I decided to test those skills in the real world. To get a taste of what backpacking in Latin America would be like, 2 friends and I took the bus from Austin to Monterrey for a few days. Due to work commitments, we could be away for 4 days, 2 of which were spent mostly on buses, giving us 2 days for adventures in Monterrey, Mexico.

About Monterrey:

Monterrey is a city in the state of Nuevo León in Northern Mexico with about 5 million people living in its metro area. In addition to being the second largest metro area in Monterrey the city is also one of Mexico’s wealthiest. People living in Monterrey, or Regiomontanos as they call themselves, have the highest per-capita income in all of Mexico. This wealth is largely due to its industrial sector, which produces many products for use both in Mexico and the United States (1).

The city has strong US influence, with many in Latin America dubbing it “that gringo city.” And due to Monterrey’s largely industrial economy and heavy United States influence, it’s not as popular to visit as other Mexican cities like Cancún or Mexico City.

Location of Monterrey.

As I learned during my visit, it is still an awesome place. In addition to the many parks and outdoor spaces in the city, like Barrio Antiguo, la Macroplaza, and Parque Fundidora, there are also a number of hikes outside the city. Most of these hikes are in the Sierra Madre Oriental mountain range that runs just South and West of the city. These mountains are tall, steep, and forested, providing a cool, damp retreat from the hot, semi-arid climate of Monterrey.

Getting There:

We left Austin on a via bus, and 10 hours later pulled up to the bus station in Monterrey. From the station, we took the metro to our hostel, My Family in Monterrey.

What We Did:

We spent our first day in the city walking around the city and getting a feel for things. We went to Barrio Antiguo, Macroplaza, and Parque Fundidora. They were nice places to visit, especially Parque Fundidora.

Pictures from Parque Fundidora.

 

The second day, we left the city and took an Uber to Parque Ecológica Chipinque, one of the many parks in the mountains near Monterrey. In addition to Chipinque, there is also Parque Nacional Cumbres de Monterrey and Reserva Natural Estatal Sierra Las Mitras, to name a few. If I had more time, I could have easily spent weeks exploring the region’s many parks. 

There are many reasons for the abundance of mountain preserves around the city. For one, the Sierra Madre Oriental is a biodiversity hotspot in Mexico, a country which is in turn a global biodiversity hotspot. In other words, over 12% of all species in the world can be found in Mexico, and a substantial number of those can be found in the Sierra Madre Oriental (2). Many of these species, like the maroon-fronted parrot, are very rare and can be found nowhere else in the world (3).

Rainfall in these mountains also supplies the majority of the city’s water (4, 5). The forests that grow in the mountains moderate the flow of water, limiting runoff during heavy rain and increasing it during drought. The importance of the forests in regulating the flow of water highlights the need to conserve them, as damaging the mountains’ ecosystems puts the entire city’s water supply in jeopardy (4). 

We spent a few hours hiking up the mountains in Chipinque along with an Argentine we met at the hostel named Naicol. During the hike, Naicol kept referring to me and my 2 friends as pendejos. Not liking the name, I told her:

¡Me parece injusto! What did we do to receive such a mean title?

She explained that, while in most of Latin America pendejo is a grave insult, in Argentina, pendejos are just children. And since she was 25 and we were all 22, we were pendejos. The differing meanings of the word was something she learned the hard way; shortly after arriving in Mexico she drew the ire of many parents after greeting a group of schoolchildren by calling:

“¡Hola pendejos!”

As we switchbacked up the mountain, the shrubs of the lower elevations turned to tall pine and oak forests, one of the previously mentioned high-biodiversity environments in Mexico. Yet despite being the monsoon season, the soil was cracked and dry, with a number of dead fallen pine trees showing that the ongoing drought in Monterrey had impacted the mountains, too.

After many kilometers and many spirited conversations, we made it to two miradores, or lookouts. From the miradores, we could see the entire city on one side, and the tall mountain peaks on the other. Gringo city or not, the views were incredible.

View of the Sierra Madre Oriental from one of the miradors.

After a few obligatory photos, we began talking to the other people who were also enjoying the miradores. They were all Regiomontanos who were out for a morning hike. One of them, an older lady, told us she worked for the circo, or circus. The circo was in town and she would be performing tonight. She said we should go and see hang from her hair, alongside her husband who could hang from his teeth! It seemed like we just stumbled into some evening plans.

Despite how far we had climbed to get to the mirador, we were at best halfway to the peak. Since it was getting hot, we decided to head back. None of us were really looking forward to a long, hot hike down the mountain, so Naicol suggested we “hacer dedo” back to the hostel.

“¿Hacer dedo?” I had not learned that one in my Spanish lessons and had no idea what it meant, so naturally, I said yes.

While I watched the family of coatís that were foraging near the road, Naicol started talking to a family who had driven their truck up the mountain road to the mirador. After a few minutes, the family told us to hop in the back of their truck, as they were headed downtown. Apparently, “hacer dedo” meant hitchhiking!

Hacemos dedo back to town.

Haciendo dedo during my adventures in Monterrey, Mexico.

The family gave us a ride down the mountain, up a few miles of highway, and all the way to a part of downtown with many restaurants. Here, we asked to get out, and as we parted ways I thanked the nice couple and their adorable 9-month-old pendejo for the ride. Just a block from where we got out was a vegan taco shop called Revolución Verde, or Green Revolution. We are there, where I had some of the best tacos and lemonade of my life.

From there, we walked to the hostel to rest for a few hours before heading out to the circo. Eventually, the time came to go, only to find out on our arrival that the civil service had canceled the circo that night for reasons no one, not even the performers, fully understood.

Disappointed about the circo, we returned to the hostel to eat pizza and play cards. Someone from Monterrey suggested we play Uno, which I said was one of my favorite card games! Upon hearing my comment, he was surprised to hear that in the United States, Uno is not called One. I told him the cultural exchange goes both ways. After a few rounds of Uno, we went to sleep and the next day took the bus back to Austin.

Water Crisis in Monterrey:

During my time in Monterrey, I heard a number of people talk about how nice it was to have water again. Like the deserts of the United States, Monterrey is in the midst of severe drought, and its severity has been compounded by a few factors. Logging in the Sierra Madre Oriental has reduced the flow of water from the mountains into the rivers during times of drought, and government corruption resulted in the cancelation of plans to build an additional reservoir for the city. The government was also very slow to reduce water supplies for many companies and wealthy neighborhoods earlier this year, squandering what little water was available. These problems reared their ugly head in June, when the city’s reservoirs basically ran out of water (6–8).

Satellite view of Monterrey’s Cerro Prieto Reservoir in July 2015 compared to July 2022 (9).

The city responded by cutting off running water to most of the area’s 5 million residents, forcing them to rely on water trucks arriving from outside the city. Despite living in one of Mexico’s wealthiest and most developed cities, many Regiomontanos were left without running water for months. Earlier this summer, many people had to wait in line for hours in the blistering heat just to get some water to drink. I was told the situation only relented when August brought much-needed rain, although the reservoirs remain very low.

The situation in Monterrey echoed what I had experienced in Austin in February 2021 during Winter Storm Urie and what happened in Jackson, Mississippi during my trip to Monterrey. In February 2021, most of Texas was without power or running water for a week after a record-breaking winter storm froze pipes and kept power plants from operating at full capacity (10–12). In Jackson, years of neglect to the city’s water system spelled disaster when record flooding inundated a water treatment plant, knocking it offline. The incident in Jackson cut off running water to all of the city’s 150,000 residents, and as of the time I published this article, the city is still without water (13, 14).

In all three of these cases, underinvestment in infrastructure and record weather events made possible by a changing climate converged to knock out basic utilities for weeks at a time. Such events are already common, and will likely grow more common in the future. 

In Monterrey, there are many indications that prolonged heat and drought are the new normal. To adapt, the city will have to cut water use, increase water storage, and protect and restore the forests of the Sierra Madre Oriental (15). Protecting the Sierra Madre Oriental is especially important, since it is the source of most of the region’s water (4, 5). As a result, the health of the city is intertwined with the health of its forests. Or, as one promotional video for Chipinque put it:

“Conservarla [naturaleza] es conservarnos” (16).

Protecting the environment is protecting ourselves.

Sources:

  1. M. Fadic, J. E. Garcilazo, A. M. Monroy, P. Veneri, “OECD Regions and Cities at a Glance” (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 2019), , doi:10.1787/b902cc00-en.
  2. R. Modley, Protecting the biodiversity of the Sierra Madre Oriental. GIZ, (available at https://www.giz.de/en/worldwide/25056.html).
  3. S. G. Ortiz-Maciel, C. Hori-Ochoa, E. Enkerlin-Hoeflich, MAROON-FRONTED PARROT (RHYNCHOPSITTA TERRISI) BREEDING HOME RANGE AND HABITAT SELECTION IN THE NORTHERN SIERRA MADRE ORIENTAL, MEXICO. Wilson J. Ornithol. 122, 513–517 (2010).
  4. Fondo de Agua Monterrey Metropolitano de Monterrey. Latin American Water Funds Partnership, (available at https://www.fondosdeagua.org/content/dam/tnc/nature/en/documents/latin-america/Monterreye.pdf).
  5. S. E. O. Hernandez, Cumbres de Monterrey Biosphere Reserve, Mexico. UNESCO (2018), (available at https://en.unesco.org/biosphere/lac/cumbres-de-monterrey).
  6. L. Perlmutter, “It”s plunder’: Mexico desperate for water while drinks companies use billions of litres. The Guardian (2022), (available at https://amp.theguardian.com/global-development/2022/jul/28/water-is-the-real-thing-but-millions-of-mexicans-are-struggling-without-it).
  7. C. Rodriguez, M. Abi-Habib, B. Avelar, Mexico’s Cruel Drought: “Here You Have to Chase the Water.” The New York Times (2022), (available at https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/03/world/americas/mexico-drought-monterrey-water.html).
  8. M. Radwin, Climate change hits northern Mexico, as officials look to solve water crisis. Mongabay Environmental News (2022), (available at https://news.mongabay.com/2022/08/climate-change-hits-northern-mexico-as-officials-look-to-solve-water-crisis/).
  9. S. Corona, Cerro Prieto: La NASA retrata desde el espacio la sequía extrema en Mexico. El País (2022), (available at https://elpais.com/mexico/2022-07-23/la-nasa-retrata-desde-el-espacio-la-sequia-extrema-en-mexico.html%20https:/elpais.com/mexico/2022-07-23/la-nasa-retrata-desde-el-espacio-la-sequia-extrema-en-mexico.html).
  10. J. Cohen, L. Agel, M. Barlow, C. I. Garfinkel, I. White, Linking Arctic variability and change with extreme winter weather in the United States. Science. 373, 1116–1121 (2021).
  11. M. Cai, E. Douglas, M. Ferman, How Texas’ power grid failed in 2021 — and who’s responsible for prev…. The Texas Tribune, (available at https://www.texastribune.org/2022/02/15/texas-power-grid-winter-storm-2021/).
  12. S. Spivey, K. Blake, A. Medina, Texas’ Big Freeze in 2021 through the lens of meteorologists — Whatever the Weather video podcast (2022), (available at https://www.ksat.com/weather/2022/02/08/texas-big-freeze-in-2021-through-the-lens-of-meteorologists-whatever-the-weather-video-podcast/).
  13. B. Dennis, S. Kaplan, Jackson, Miss., shows how extreme weather can trigger a clean-water crisis. The Washington Post (2022), (available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/31/jackson-water-crisis-mississippi-floods/).
  14. T. Waldrop, Mom and son share videos of daily life with no clean water in Jackson, Mississippi. CNN (2022), (available at https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2022/09/02/jackson-mississippi-water-crisis-mother-and-son-boil-water-orig-llr.cnn).
  15. E. Molina-Perez, D. G. Groves, S. W. Popper, R. Crespo-Elizondo, Developing a Robust Water Strategy for Monterrey, Mexico: Diversification and Adaptation for Coping with Climate, Economic, and Technological Uncertainties (RAND Corporation, 2019).
  16. P. E. Chipinque, Chipinque. Inixar, (available at https://www.inixar.com/proyectos/chipinque).
Outdoor Recreation

When Cotton Doesn’t Kill: Ideal Hot Weather Fabrics

Mark

In 1935, two outdoors people living in Seattle confronted a problem. They loved to mountaineer, but a good Austrian ice axe would break the bank. So to solve the problem, they cut out the middlemen and started ordering the ice axes directly from Austria, saving a whole lot of money in the process. Their strategy worked so well that soon their friends got into it, first buying only ice axes but gradually diversifying into other mountaineering gear as well. The enterprise grew and grew, first taking up just a shelf, then a whole building, then a whole bunch of buildings, and then becoming the multi-million dollar retail chain we all know and love (1).

The name of this chain? REI.

The ice axe that started it all (1).

What is the purpose of this story?

To illustrate that mainstream outdoor recreation in the United States has its roots in the Mountain West. If you are still not convinced, go ahead and read about the origins of other popular outdoor brands, such as The North Face, Columbia Sportswear, or Black Diamond. Or read about the origins of outdoor recreation groups like the Sierra Club (hint, the name). The only exception that immediately jumps to mind is Patagonia, whose founders decided to name their company after a mountainous region of South America, rather than North America.

The origins of mainstream outdoor recreation in the United States has a number of profound implications, but here I am going to focus on what it means in the context of specialized outdoor clothing. If you have ever been to the mountains, I am sure you know that, thanks to elevation and orographic lift (2), mountains tend to be colder and wetter than low-lying areas. As a result, outdoor clothing and the wisdom surrounding it is designed to keep you warm and dry in the cold, wet conditions generally present in the mountains. 

A typical day in the mountains.

Keeping warm and dry in the mountains generally means wearing fabrics that dry quickly and/or insulate well when damp, such as polyester, nylon, and wool. Wearing these fabrics serves to get rid of body moisture and keep your skin as warm and dry as possible (3, 4). 

Alternatively, fabrics made from plants, like cotton, linen, and hemp, behave just the opposite. Plant fabrics contain lots of cellulose, a molecule that loves water, causing clothing made from these materials to absorb more water and take longer to dry than fabrics from other sources (5). These fabrics’ love for water is more than just uncomfortable. Wet cotton, for example, saps heat from the body so effectively that it can put the wearer at serious risk of hypothermia in cold weather, an idea that is described by the ubiquitous phrase in the outdoor community: “cotton kills” (6, 7). 

While this phrase is certainly true, its nuance has been lost. Now, outdoor brands avoid plant fabrics for virtually all of their technical clothing, not just the ones made for cold weather (8, 9). And doing so is a great disservice to the outdoor community, as plant fabrics have a number of desirable qualities for hot weather.

I was crazy enough to spend 30 hours per week outdoors guiding during the hottest summer in Texas history (10, 11). I started the summer wearing my fancy, ultra-cooling, UV-shielding polyester shirt, expecting it to keep me as comfortable as anyone could be in triple-digit temperatures. But I quickly found that I overheated faster than my customers who wore regular cotton t-shirts, and that as soon as I changed into cotton, I felt a lot more comfortable.

But why?

Polyester is actually less breathable than cotton. Breathability refers to how easy it is for water vapor to pass through a fabric, and water vapor passes through moisture-loving cotton far more easily than it passes through moisture-hating polyester. As a result, wearing polyester made it difficult for the vapor from my evaporating sweat to escape, causing the air next to my skin to feel even stickier than the ambient air (12). My nylon shirts also had similar properties (13). Wool, while breathable, was simply too good at retaining heat to wear on a hot day (14).

Alternatively, the cotton soaked up my sweat and, damp from it, sucked the warmth right from my body. While it was certainly true that the cotton took longer to dry, this hardly mattered when it was so hot that even a glass of water could evaporate by the end of the day! Cotton, far from killing me, saved me from the unrelenting heat. And as I later learned, cotton is just the tip of the iceberg.

Linen, a fiber made from flax, has long been regarded as the best fabric for the heat in tropical areas across the world (15, 16). This is partly because linen has a high rate of thermal conductivity, meaning that even when dry it can quickly transfer heat away from the body (17). And if it does get wet, linen dries more quickly than cotton, making it a bit more comfortable when you are especially sweaty. Linen is also very stiff, keeping it from clinging to the skin and instead causing it to act more like a wearable shade canopy than clothing. In addition, linen is one of the strongest known plant fibers, allowing linen products to be thin yet durable (18).

A field of flax plants that will soon be turned to linen.

Hemp, another up-and-coming plant fabric, seems to have similar properties as linen. Fabric made from hemp is also anti-microbial, meaning that you can wear it for longer before it starts to smell (19). 

In addition to being great hot weather fabrics, hemp and linen used to be among the world’s most popular fabrics. Linen was the most popular fabric in Europe and its American colonies until it was overtaken by cotton in the 1800’s, when slavery and industrial processing methods made cotton cheaper to produce, yet much less ethical (20). Hemp fell out of popularity in the early 1900’s, when it was caught in the crossfire of the United States government’s criminalization of marijuana. Before being criminalized, hemp used to be so ubiquitous that even George Washington farmed it (21)!

Wearing linen pants and a hemp shirt on a 100+ degree day.

It is worth noting that I have omitted one important fact: that the qualities of fabrics are impacted by more than just the types of fibers that constitute them. Polyester, for example, can be made more breathable depending on how the fibers are woven together and if special coatings are used. And there are a number of very breathable (albeit expensive) polyester clothes on the market (22–24). Still, clothes made from linen, hemp, and even cotton, on average, are much cooler and more breathable than clothes made from polyester, nylon, or wool.

A shift toward linen and hemp clothing would also do a lot of good for the world. Unlike cotton, they are not intertwined with a dark history of oppression and environmental destruction and require significantly less water and fertilizer to produce (25–27). And unlike synthetic fabrics like nylon and polyester, which are made from plastic, plant fabrics are generally biodegradable and do not leach microplastics into the environment (28, 29). 

A greater use of these fabrics would also make us more comfortable in the outdoors. Since all fabrics have their own unique strengths and weaknesses, there is no universal “best fabric”. We need different things from our clothing under different conditions, and wearing pure polyester on a hot, humid day makes about as much sense as wearing cotton in the snow. And the outdoor community is starting to recognize this fact. Some outdoor brands are moving away from the rigid dogma of “cotton kills” and have even mentioned cotton in their warm weather clothing guides. Mentions of linen and hemp, however, are still lacking (30, 31).

Despite failing to include linen and hemp in their clothing guides, some brands have begun to sell clothing containing varying degrees of these fabrics. They still seem to be regarded as novelties and fashion items rather than things to be worn for strenuous activity, but it does seem that change is in the air. Hopefully before long the outdoor community will realize that wearing plant fabrics in the heat will keep us a whole lot more comfortable outdoors.

Have any questions or feedback? Contact me.

 

Sources

  1. REI History: It Started With An Ice Axe. Uncommon Path – An REI Co-op Publication (2016), (available at https://www.rei.com/blog/camp/rei-history-it-started-with-an-ice-axe).
  2. R. A. Houze Jr, Orographic effects on precipitating clouds. Rev. Geophys. 50 (2012), doi:10.1029/2011rg000365.
  3. H. B. Rochfort, Material Science: The Art of Layering. Uncommon Path – An REI Co-op Publication (2020), (available at https://www.rei.com/blog/snowsports/material-science-layering).
  4. N. Kasturiya, M. S. Subbulakshmi, S. C. Gupta, H. Raj, System design of cold weather protective clothing. Def. Sci. J. 49, 457–464 (1999).
  5. A. Célino, S. Fréour, F. Jacquemin, P. Casari, The hygroscopic behavior of plant fibers: a review. Front Chem. 1, 43 (2013).
  6. P. Werner, Why Does Cotton Kill? Section Hiker (2021), (available at https://sectionhiker.com/why-does-cotton-kill/).
  7. How To Dress in Cold Weather. REI, (available at https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/how-to-dress-in-cold-weather.html).
  8. Sun Protection Clothing. Patagonia, (available at https://www.patagonia.com/shop/sun-protection-clothing).
  9. Sun Protection. Outdoor Research, (available at https://www.outdoorresearch.com/us/sun-protection).
  10. R. Villalpando, Austin on pace to make 2022 summer its hottest ever. Austin American Statesman (2022), (available at https://www.statesman.com/story/weather/2022/07/25/austin-temperatures-breaking-records-2022-summer-is-its-hottest-ever/65380360007/).
  11. R. Graham, Living Through Texas’ Hottest Summer. The New York Times (2022), (available at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/07/15/us/texas-heat.html).
  12. K. C. Schuster, F. Suchomel, J. Männer, M. Abu-Rous, H. Firgo, Functional and comfort properties of textiles from TENCEL® fibres resulting from the fibres’ water-absorbing nanostructure: A review. Macromol. Symp. 244, 149–165 (2006).
  13. B. Kumar, V. Somkuwar, Textiles for Functional Applications (BoD – Books on Demand, 2021).
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Environment, Projects

Modeling Belowground Biomass in a Texas Salt Marsh

Mark

About the Paper: 

I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in the spring of 2022 with a B.S.A. in honors biology. As part of the honors degree, I wrote a thesis made up of original research about modeling the mass of plant matter underground in a Texas salt marsh. Modeling this underground plant mass, or belowground biomass, is important because it can determine the salt marsh’s ability to survive flooding due to sea level rise.

Although the topic sounds technical, I went great lengths to make my thesis accessible to everyone, so feel free to read it even if you have no background in ecology!

Taking a soil sample near Port Aransas, Texas.

Abstract: 

Salt marshes, ecosystems dominated by grasses in areas subject to frequent tidal flooding, are threatened by sea level rise. Salt marshes can survive sea level rise through a process known as vertical accretion, where marshes create soil and increase their elevation. Accretion rates can be predicted by belowground biomass, the total mass of living plant matter in the soil. Thus, belowground biomass models can be used to monitor the health of these ecosystems. In this study, I created an exploratory belowground biomass model of a salt marsh in the coastal community of Port Aransas, Texas dominated by Spartina alterniflora and Distichlis spicata, two common marsh grasses. To create the model, measured 8 ecologically important parameters and used them to create a model to look for predictors of belowground biomass in the two grasses. For Spartina, stem length and gross primary productivity were the two most important predictors of belowground biomass. For Distichlis, aboveground biomass alone predicted most of the variation in belowground biomass. I then present the models as tools for conservation planners to identify areas of the marsh with low belowground biomass that are especially vulnerable to sea level rise.

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