[PCA] Any Ecological Megatransect, is extremely valuable?

Craig Dremann craig at astreet.com
Fri Sep 15 17:16:00 CDT 2006


Dear Wayne and All,

Thanks for your email.  

NEVER, EVER consider that any ecological transect, especially a
Megatransect that can be retraced to particular geographic points, is
ever worthless--actually it's worth its weight in 24K gold, because it
may be the only record that exists for that area, at that time.

For example, last year I drove 10,000 miles to map over 1,900 miles of
the California desert's roadsides, for the occurrance of a new weed, the
Sahara mustard, Brassica tournefortii, that is rapidly taking over the
roadsides of the arid West---you can see some examples of those
mile-by-mile transects marked with a "+" sign, linked to 
http://www.ecoseeds.com/mustards.contents.html

In the 2005 California Desert Megatransect I was looking for that exotic
mustard, plus noting where there were good examples of the pristine
native ecosystem, at every post mile on the highways.  

Where there were no post miles along the roads, like along the Old US
Route 66, I used odometer miles, and also linked the data to highway
junctions, towns, etc.  

In the 1997 Great Basin/Rockies Megatransect I was looking for native
grasses, exotic grasses, and the general ecological conditions that I
encountered at every odometer mile-point, and the data is also linked
with Post Miles on the highways, highway junctions, towns, etc.

For the various North American Roadside Megatransect
ecological-conditions data, that investigators around the country might
be able to accumulate, wouldn't it be nice to have a central place to
eventually store all this great roadside information?  

If you search at http://www.google.com for "megatransect" you will see
that National Geographic has sponsored at least three Ecological
Megatransects in Africa---so why should our fine and beautiful continent
of North America be left out of the fun?

Sincerely,  Craig Dremann, Redwood City, CA (650) 325-7333




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