I’m on St Catherine’s Island, spending the day working with students on data analysis and presentations. No rest for those on a schedule, although we did have a class reading of the Declaration.

Of note to patriots: the ocean appears to be robbing the USA of land. Diminishment. The coast is eroding here at a rate of at least one and a half meters per year. A little further south, the rate is closer to seven meters each year. For the whole stretch of coast on St Catherine’s Island, only one or two small areas are accreting (growing), the rest is in retreat. Damming of rivers and dredging of sea ports starve the beach of new material. This, combined with a rising sea level, results in loss of land.

Erosion first exposes the roots of palms, live oaks and other shoreline vegetation, then topples the trees, leaving picturesque “boneyards.”

Storms cause much of the erosion, but even on calm days the steep slope of the sea-facing bluffs are continually disturbed by small landslides: rivulets of North America sliding into the Atlantic.

Coastal erosion is underway over much of the eastern shore of the continent. Huge areas  of land are lost from the Mississippi delta every year. How does all this add up? Does erosion outpace accretion on a country-wide level? Certainly as the world warms, it will. But is the USA smaller today than it was in 1776? The answer is hard to come by, but it seems that for the last few decades at least: yes, shrinkage is occurring.

Marine debris found in 1 by 10 meter transects along the wrack line on St Catherine’s Island, GA. Each photo is the collection of all man-made objects greater than 1 cm long within the transect. These were collected this morning by students in my part of Sewanee’s Island Ecology program. This exercise can be thought of as proto-archaeology or a study of the ecological slip-stream of a successful vertebrate species. The mayo jar with fossilizing mayo still present within was my favorite find.

For a closer look, click on the photos.

For recent news on debris that is too heavy to wash ashore, see here.

This morning the New York Times published my op-ed about nature and same-sex marriage.

Please follow the link above to read the article. What follows is an abbreviated list of links to documents that are relevant to the piece.

Supreme Court documents from docket. Specifically, I quote from: 12-144 Brief of Petitioners on the Merits.

Pope Benedict’s Christmas greetings to the Roman Curia

Roy Moore’s re-election and statements.

Language from the TN Bill that died in the State House this week.

Oscar Wilde trial quotes: here and here.

Japanese cherries: Two cultivars make up most of the Washington DC cherries, the Yoshino Cherry and the Kwanzan Cherry. Photos of bisexual flowers here and here and here.

Elms: The whole genus Ulmus, to which elms belong, is bisexual (e.g., page 369 in Flora of North America, Volume 3. 1997. Edited by the Flora of North America Editorial Committee. Oxford University Press).

Ginkgo: Peter Crane’s 2013 book, Ginkgo, Yale Univ Press discusses both the separation of male and female (page 53) and “spontaneous partial sexual switches” (pages 63-64).

Controversy in the medical literature about how human intersex: Blackless, Fausto-Sterling, and Sax.

Data on the frequency of homosexual bonds and sex in birds: MacFarlane.