This summer I was fortunate enough to experience both Austin and Houston summers. While they are similar climates they both have qualities unique to their own habitat. Texas is known for its intensely hot summers typically averaging around 100 degrees. That’s not googled just one Texans guesstimation. I didn’t spend too much time outside this summer for that reason exactly. But I was able to observe a few notable moments spent outdoors during my time in Austin.
The time I spent in nature while I was in Austin was typically walking to and from the bus stop accompanied by a hand held fan. However, there was one weekend in particular in which my brother came to visit me. During his stay we were able to cover a lot of the ground in the city mostly by walking, thank god for living off of South Congress for that. One of those days we spent a good part of the morning kayaking on Town Lake as any true Austinite would. On our kayaking adventure we ended up at a really scenic part of the lake that seemed to be cut through the hillside. I’m not sure if that was a manmade occurrence or natural. Regardless, considering the lake was probably a good 4 stories below the hillsides I would be curious to know if the lake once was high enough to break through and just how many years it took to become the Town Lake that cuts through the hillside that we know today. Or, if it is manmade; what did it look like before? Why the need to cut through? Did the lake originally extend as far as it does today? Whatever the alteration, natural or not, it wasn’t recent as there is clearly vegetation growing from the hillside. There are lots of deep green (what looks like..) vines and or shrubs of some sort. The water of the lake is a deep green. While, I am not a lake scientist by any means I could only imagine this coloring is caused by depth of water and algae specific to that region. Additionally I couldn’t help notice just how busy the lake was with human activity. Town lake is lined with business providing boating and paddle boarding to utilize this. Though it may be far fetched I can’t help but possibly wonder if this excess amount of human disruption of the lake causes ecological imbalance in the way of the aquatic life. And if this disruption could possibly include a lack of movement by the fish and other bottom feeders to take care of the algae growth which then leads to an increase of algae causing the darkness we see in the water. If this is true is it harmful to the environment? What measures can be taken to prevent this disruption?
In addition to my observations of human development in nature and its impact on the environments it changes I also had the chance to see how birds in urban Austin adapted to their environmental changes. A family that I was working for over the summer would mention the bird eggs in the back yard. When I went out to see what exactly they were talking about I noticed the mother bird had dug into one of the potted plants and created a burrow to lay and protect her eggs in. While it is unfortunate that she had to improvise on man made territory it is impressive and a clear adaptation on her part to find the space and means to protect her eggs. I am not sure of the specific type of bird that this was (though I saw them all over austin this summer) I have been told that some birds build nests in the traditional sense (basket style in a tree top) and some tend to burrow. I would be interested to see if this particular bird was a naturally burrowing bird or if it was adapting to it’s environment for the sake of posterity. I would also be interested to notice if food availability and resources were a contributing factor for choosing this location. Could this location be helpful for the birds as there aren’t many predators in a family back yard porch? Or could the situation be harmful as the birds aren’t being as socialized into their environment?
For my blog I would like to focus my attention and observations on the relationships between nature and human development in a particular habitat. I would like to be able to identify the effects of human development in a habitat and how the nature around it adapts or doesn’t adapt to it. Although it takes hundreds of years to clearly see a major change in a species based on adaptation I would like to challenge myself to notice the small adaptations happening around me now that lead to these prolonged changes. By doing this I will hopefully become more consciously aware of adaptation efforts and why/how human development in nature should be closely monitored due to its effect on the environment. Otherwise we risk creating irreversible changes to our surroundings. As it was written in the Sand County Almanac “Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry” (Leopold). Leopold makes a point to remind the reader that with out nature we can not have the things we use to get us through our everyday lives and if we continue to take advantage of this without regard to said nature we will essentially be cutting off our own resources. We are too caught up in the product of these resources that we often forget the beauty of its beginnings. With awareness comes knowledge and with knowledge comes a greater social responsibility. IN a fast paced developing world it is vital to our existence to make ourselves aware of how we progress as a human race into nature; we must ensure to proceed with caution in order to preserve the beauty in nature we are still fortunate to have.