Digesting thousands of years of change

Last night's keynote presentation by Bob Steneck stimulated a healthy early morning discussion among participants. The question taking center stage: "How can we give our students a sense of what Maine was like thousands of years ago, and how the flora and fauna have changed through time?" Participants' ideas included capturing local, oral histories, using on-line environment simulations, and using a popular geologic time diagram....


CAPTURING LOCAL HISTORIES
"Ted Ames a long-term, Maine lobster and ground fisherman, has fused the roles of fisherman and applied scientist.... His studies, reinforced by a rigorous methodology, draw distinctively from the anecdotal experiences of aging fishermen to map historical patterns and chart the evolution of current conditions...."

Islands in Time: A Natural and Cultural History of the Islands in the Gulf of Maine Phillip W. Conkling


SIMULATIONS
"Net Logo is a cross-platform multi-agent programmable modeling environment...."

University of Maine Climate Change Institute
Research & reconstruction resources


GEOLOGIC TIME ANALOGIES
"When geologic time is compressed to the scale of a calendar year, 1 second equals about 146 years. At this scale, World War II began about 0.4 second before midnight on December 31....

• First fossil evidence of cells with a nucleus 7/17/04 9:54 PM
• First multi-celled organisms (seaweed and algae) 9/3/04 3:39 PM
• Oldest marine worms and jellyfish 11/8/04 4:35 PM
• 505 First fish 11/21/04 7:40 PM
• 470 First fossil evidence of land plants 11/24/04 2:30 PM
• 430 First vascular land plants 11/27/04 6:53 PM
• 414 Oldest lung fish fossils 11/29/04 1:26 AM
• 408 Oldest fossil evidence of mosses 11/29/04 12:53 PM
• 385 First insects (beetles), scorpions, and centipedes 12/1/04 8:49 AM
• ...."

[Link: Google "Geologic Time Scale" and download first entry]