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Prehistoric Garbage Piles Created "Tree Islands"
sciencehabit writes "Piles of garbage left by humans thousands of years ago may have helped form 'tree islands' in the Florida Everglades--patches of relatively high and dry ground that rise from the wetlands. They stand between 1 and 2 meters higher than the surrounding landscape, can cover 100 acres or more, and host two to three times the number of species living in the surrounding marsh. Besides providing habitat for innumerable birds, the islands offer refuge for animals such as alligators and the Florida panther during flood season. The trash piles—a mix of discarded food, charcoal, shell tools, and broken pottery—would have been slightly higher and drier than the surrounding marsh, offering a foothold for trees, shrubs, and other vegetation."
To be fair, the historic "garbage" was quite different in composition than the garbage we generate today.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
"But officer, it's not littering. I'm building a habitat for endangered species!"
It's not that misleading - it was trash. And while you seem to be getting awfully worked up about the hypothetical political pull of this article, I'd like to note that environmental stressors (including oil, and, yes, even nuclear reactors) have affected the Earth long before our species even existed, and will no doubt continue to do so well after we're gone.
I'm sorry, what I meant to say is that you're a special snowflake and your mere existence will leave an indelible mark on our world.
Oh, the hubris of mankind.
So because some people are stupid, scientific articles should be forbidden from using totally appropriate and correct terminology (here's a hint: broken pottery and shells are prehistoric garbage). Way to retard forward progress buddy!
I guess we should avoid master-slave hardware paradigms, or the term blackboard due to racial sensitivity too, huh? We need to tailor all our language to appease the ignorant, after all.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
How do we know that the garbage didn't collect because the land was drier so people lived there?
Yes, well... there are a few obvious things to look at
a) Humans do not generally live on top of their rubbish dumps; if they did they'd have to continually rebuild their homes on top of the accumulated rubbish. While not completely implausible, the evidence would still be there if this is the course of action the people took
b) The important thing is not the current height of the "islands" but the height of the islands minus the accumulated rubble/rubbish
Do you think that the people writing the study didn't consider these two items that I just pulled off the top of my head? I'm sure if they didn't then their peers would have throughout the review process.
The "correlation is not causation" argument is valid, but I tend to think it's overused; it's only really valid if you read the original paper and the limitations, assumptions and methodology within.
True, they didn't have Reality TV back then.
Without humans having a thing to do with it those islands form all the time. They form to a degree that the state has a machine that goes in and destroys the island. All that happens is that any irregularity that causes a bottom to be slightly shallower in a spot will tend to attract plants which over time build a thicker and thicker mat of cast off materials held in place by the roots of the plants. At a certain point the mat becomes heavy enough to actually press down against the bottom and trees and shrubs flourish making the little islands even more solid.
The device that eats these islands looks like a paddle wheel boat with the paddle wheel in the very front of the boat. That wheel beats into the vegetation and pushes it onto a barge like deck. The operator keeps the wheel chopping at the island until the entire island is loaded on the barge. Sadly large nuimbers of bass and other fish as well as snakes and turtles are also loaded onto the barges.