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Home My Public Portal AboutSciencel d a h O S-le �eSr» /:? /:2 5/2 cc a Historical site to mark dig for mammoth remains GRANGEVILLE — Resi- dents are commemorating the Tolo Lake dig with the opening of a historical site along U.S. Highway 95. In 1994, archaeologists un- earthed fossilized mammoth re- mains here. The site includes a $20,000 mammoth replica and a mural of what Tolo Lake may have looked like at the time the ani- mal roamed the earth. An infor- mation kiosk will eventually be added to the display. Although the scientists and bones are gone, the Tolo Lake find is far from forgotten. Ex- perts continue to prepare the bones for study and the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello is raising money for a larger Tolo Lake mammoth ex- hibit. The centerpiece of the exhibit will be the nearly complete skull of one of the mammoths, said Mary Flint, registrar and earth sciences collections manager at the Pocatello museum. The display will take over for a smaller, traveling exhibit that has visited Grangeville, as well as state's natural -history museum. As scientists stabilize the bones, they can begin measur- ing and studying them. They want to determine when the animals died and why Tolo Lake preserved the re- mains so well. Susanne Miller, who directed excavation and research of the Tolo Lake dig, said there are no plans to exhume more fossils. But, she said, scientists might want to return to Tolo Lake to do some core drilling to help de- termine the lake's characteris- tics. The lake flooded after the dig in 1995 and is now a popular fishing and recreation spot. The Idaho State Historical So- ciety is still interested in the site, said Dit ector Steve Guerber. "The desire (to dig) will al- ways be there if the decision was made to drain that lake again," Guerber said. "There has been considera- tion to keep the site open, but the feeling was the attraction as a fishing site and recreation site may have been greater." NASA tree -ring study tracks E1 Nino history E1 Nino is not a new weather phenomenon, according to a recent NASA study that looks 750 years into the past using tree -ring records. Utilizing special computer tech- niques, a NASA scientist has linked tree -ring widths - a natural record of local and regional climate con- ditions - with sea surface temperatures to compile a record that looks back three-quarters of a millennium, indicating that El Nifio caused heavy rain in some places in South America and droughts in other areas. "We feed the computer model with past tree -ring data, and this model `hind casts' past sea surface temperatures," said Hector D'Antoni, a scientist at NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "We can go back in time and reconstruct some ofthe factors con- trolling ecosystems," D'Antoni said. An ecosystem is a system com- posed oflivingorganisms and their environment. r "The hypothesis I had all along 0 was that the El Nino Southern Os- cillation is not a new component of the global climate system, and that ENSO effects on South America were not new or negligible," he said. "Sea surface temperatures of both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in tropical and subtropical locations have a strong influence on the temperate forests of South America," D'Antoni said. "There- fore, one can expect to find some `signal' of these drivers in the col- lection of tree rings over a period of time." "Precipitation is related to the ocean -atmosphere interface and, in South America, predominantly dominated by the Atlantic Ocean," he said. "The ENSO affects these patterns in four regions with large increases of precipitation (in Ec- uador and Argentina), drought (in northern Amazonia) and higher temperature (in•Ecuador and east- ern Brazil). These changes affect tree growth in these and other re- gions of South America." D'Antoni developed a connec- tion between rate of tree growth and sea surface temperatures us- ing neural network software models. Using these models, he es- timated past sea surface temperatures based only on tree - ring widths. Wider tree rings indicate more tree growth. Precipi- tation and temperature control much of this growth. Neural network models "learn" by observing patterns in today's world and then make precise esti- mates. D'Antoni obtained tree -ring data produced by scientists who study the annual growth rings in trees. These researchers collected data from 25 sites, largely in the sub -Antarctic region of South America. With computer models, tree -ring width records and sea surface temperature data, D'Antoni established a pattern for the last few hundred years. When linked with sea surface temperatures, tree -ring growth patterns are proving to be excep- tional starting points for researchers who are reconstruct- ing past and predicting future climates. D'Antoni and co -investigator Ante Mlinarevic of San Jose State University in San Jose, Calif., re- constructed past sea surface temperatures of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans for the years 1246 to 1995. While his findings eventually could lead to attempts by scientists to make long-range forecasts oflev- els of rainfall, humidity and other consequences of major climate changes, D'Antoni said he is still conducting basic science and is not • ready to attempt climate change predictions. His immediate objective is sim- ply to learn more about Earth's climate, he said. 5Z4A. 644-4 5/>y'61 McCall Airport Manager John Anderson examines a sensor to measure the movement of the earth's plates that was recently installed at the airport. It is visible from Deinhard Lane. Star -News photo by Tecla Markosky High-tech device at McCall airport measures shifts in Earth's plate BY TECLA MARKOSKY The Star -News It may look like aliens have landed at the McCall airport, but the domed device that has appeared at the north end of the airport runway near Dein- hard Lane has a down -to -Earth purpose. UNAVCO, a Boulder, Colo., company, has installed 771 of the devices around the country with the intent of gaining a better understanding of the geologic factors that control earthquakes and volcanoes. About 1,000 of the devices will be installed by September 2008. "Think of this as a very ac- curate GPS system," said Keegan Fengler, a permitting assistant for UNAVCO. "It's accurate down to the millimeter." The device is monitoring the movement of the North Ameri- can tectonic plate. The plate and other plates on the earth are always moving, and devices like the one at the McCall airport will take a measurement relative to a fixed point, using satellites, every 15 seconds, Fengler said. The device took two days to install and is expected to stay until at least 2017. The project is funded by a $200-million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation. The device is self sufficient, requires little maintenance and is powered by its own solar panel, said Katrin Hafner, UNAVCO Pacific Northwest regional en- gineer. While McCall is not on a vol- cano, it does sit on shifting plates, Hafner said. • `All of our sites are on shifting plates," she said. "But McCall is what we call a backbone site which gives us general informa- tion about geologic movement instead of information specifi- cally related to this area." See TECH, Page A-10 Tech (Continued from Page A-1) McCall is an excel- lent site for a passive monitoring device, Hafner said. An excellent location for a GPS monument like the one in McCall would be a secure site with an excellent sky view in all direc- tions with bedrock at the surface, she said. Since the area around McCall is heavily forested, the airport provides such a place even though there is no bedrock at the surface, she said. UNAVCO coordinated with city officials to get permission for the project and paid the city a one-time amount of $1,500 for the right to use city property. The GPS antenna which sits inside the grey dome is a passive device that receives signals from satellites in the sky, Hafner said. The device is a fancy versions of a hand-held GPS unit, with much better accuracy. Data is then transmitted to a data facility in Boulder, Colo., via standard cell phone technology. Data is continuously recorded by the device and is later made available to the public on the Internet. For more information about the device and the project, visit wwwunavco.org or www. earthscope.org.