Map of Moon water; blue indicates higher concentrations of detected water molecules. Credit: NASA/Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument.

In one short week, NASA's LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission will quite literally come to an end—a fiery, spectacular end as it deliberately crashes into the lunar South Pole crater Cabeus A in hopes of kicking up enough material for us to detect the presence of water. If you want to see the action as it happens, come up to Chabot Space & Science Center on Friday morning, October 9, 3:00 AM to watch NASA's live simulcast and–weather and the gods of astronomy permitting–the view through Chabot's 36-inch telescope, "Nellie."

In recent months, NASA has been sending a lot of acronyms—excuse me: spacecraft—to the Moon: LRO with it's LROC, LEND, and LOLA instruments; LCROSS (which I've heard some call "LaCROSS," for the record) with its VIS, NIR, MIR, TLP, VSP, NSP—oh, the list goes on!

The fact of the matter is MOON spells "Moon." Whether or not we do end up returning humans to the Moon in the next decade, which is partly what reconnaissance by LRO and LCROSS and their arrays of acro-instrumentation is for, there are still things to be learned about our nearest neighbor in space—and water is the word at present.

Even as LCROSS and its Centaur-booster-rocket-turned-lunar-clobbering-device follow their final fatal trajectory toward Cabeus A, its launch buddy LRO, now in an orbit around the Moon and beginning to send back scientific results and images, may have already detected telltale signs of the wet stuff—which on the Moon won't be wet, but frozen solid, of course; liquid water cannot persist in the Moon's airless environment.

LRO's LEND (Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector) instrument is designed to find signs of water molecules by measuring neutron radiation emanating from the lunar surface. The Moon is constantly bombarded by high energy cosmic radiation, which forms radioactive isotopes in the soil that in turn emit neutrons. By measuring the abundance and speed distribution of the neutrons, details of soil chemistry can be inferred. The presence of light atomic nuclei–in particular the lightest of all, hydrogen, a component of water—in the soil reduces the levels of neutron emission. That drop in neutron radiation is the telltale scientists are looking for.

While LRO scientists want to make further measurements before concluding the presence water ice concentrations, observations from three other spacecraft—NASA's M3 instrument (Moon Mineralogy Mapper) aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and the Cassini and EPOXI spacecraft—have mutually confirmed the presence of water and hydroxyl molecules (hydroxyl is a water molecule missing one of its two hydrogen atoms) in the soils of the Moon, across much wider expanses than the confines of dark polar crater floors.

Cassini and EPOXI made measurements as they flew past the Moon to their respective destinations (Saturn, and a comet), and measurements have been made by M3 from lunar orbit. The detection of water by these spacecraft doesn't mean seas of liquid or glaciers of ice, or even blanketing layers of gaseous water vapor, but rather relatively small amounts of water and hydroxyl molecules attached to, or "stuck to," other materials in the top few millimeters of soil.

This thin "confetti" of water molecules appears to come and go with lunar daytime, forming during the cold, dark two-week-long lunar night and diminishing under the baking light of the Sun.

So, right now, MOON spells water (M3 et al), water (LRO), and possibly more water (LCROSS, on October 9th)—at least, the evidence seems to be mounting!

Recycling graywater from sinks, showers, and washing machines to irrigate your garden is the latest in green living—but until recently, was against the law.

The Department of Labor has received hundreds of millions of dollars to support training programs for home performance professionals—from weatherization technicians to high-end builders and remodelers—and workers for the new renewable energy economy. Community colleges across the nation are gearing up for crowded classrooms full of future green jobbers. Groups such as Green for All are serving as the conscience of the movement, and remind us that the new economy has to include those who stand to benefit the most, since the old economy hasn’t served them well. Labs such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and private companies are working at a fevered pace to assist the push for greener housing with advanced modeling tools, statistical data, some of the best minds and hearts, and new technology.

There is also more energy in water, so to speak. In late July, the California Department of Housing and Community Development made a proposal for a new graywater standard to the California Building Standards Commission. The new standard was almost immediately accepted. Graywater is shower, sink, and laundry water used for gardening and for toilet flushing that would otherwise be wasted. It’s taken a while for the state to figure out how to let its citizens use this water legally. Thousands have been using it illegally until now. The standards don’t address using graywater to flush toilets, and there are restrictions. For example, graywater from washing diapers cannot be used, and graywater cannot be used to water edible roots or edible plants with the edible parts in contact with soil.

California uses up to 10% of its energy treating, moving, or heating water, so saving water saves energy as well.

Credit: NASA.

When the LCROSS satellite, nicknamed Centaur, smacks into the south pole of the moon in late October, it is expected to produce a plume of dust 37 miles high, which may be visible from Earth with a good backyard telescope. It will be visible in an arc from Hawaii to Texas.

If you'd like to catch the impact, the Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland is hosting a Shooting the Moon star party on the night of impact. Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco may host a star-gazing event, as well, but it hasn't been announced yet. And you could check in on other observatories in the Bay Area, as well: Lick observatory in the Santa Cruz mountains, Foothill observatory in Los Altos Hills, Sonoma State observatory in Rohnert Park, and the Fremont Peak observatory in the East Bay.

Not all of them will be open to the public; for instance, Foothill Observatory will be closed to the public, because they’ve been asked to take photographs of the event.

If you know anyone with a 10-inch telescope (that's the diameter of the lens), you can bet that telescope will be lined up to look skyward when the LCROSS probe hits the moon.

If the impact goes well, then the plume above the moon's surface could hover there for hours. It will make its own crater on the moon about 6 feet deep and 30 yards wide, so the plume of dust will not be visible to the naked eye, or even through binoculars.

The exact date, time and even the exact location of the impact have not yet been determined. Keep your eye on NASA's site for more information.

And one aside: This impact will not hurt the moon, or send it off its orbit. That may seem apparent to many people, but NASA Ames officials say those are the most-asked questions about the project.

Listen to the Crash Landing radio report online.

"2008 was one of the hottest years on record."

Just last week, Max Moritz and his team at UC Berkeley's Center for Fire Research & Outreach published a study that shows widely varied fire response to climate changes around the world. Post-doctoral fellow Meg Krawchuk was the lead data cruncher in the effort, with contributions from researchers at Texas Tech University.

What they found were suggestions of rapid changes in fire regimes, and not all in the same direction. Some places (like most of California) will likely see a spike in the fire hazard, while other regions (like the Pacific Northwest) could see a retreat of wildfire frequency and intensity:

"In contrast to any expectation that global warming should necessarily result in more fire, we find that regional increases in fire probabilities may be counter-balanced by decreases at other locations, due to the interplay of temperature and precipitation variables. Despite this net balance, our models predict substantial invasion and retreat of fire across large portions of the globe."

Moritz has been stumping for new approaches to fire-climate analysis. He says rather than treat fire strictly as the product of other climate change variables, we should think of it also as a climate driver.

Map shows areas of potential fire advance (orange) and retreat (blue) by 2010-2039 (medium-high emissions scenario)

You can use the player below to hear an excerpt from my interview with Moritz, in which he explains the new perspective that he thinks his team's study brings to the fire-climate connection.

More than 20 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into California waterways last year, according to the state Department of Water Resources Control Board. That's not counting the partially treated sewage that makes its way into our water from overflows and sewer system malfunctions.

Many big sewer pipes are old, and many of the sewage treatment plants are antiquated. But the biggest problem faced by sewer systems in California is the tiny pipe called the lateral.

That's the pipe that runs from your home to the street, the small pipes under all of our homes that end up joining the bigger sewer pipes. When those pipes develop cracks, water leaks into them.

Storm water itself would not overwhelm a sewage system, because it's designed to be a closed system. Storm water is not supposed to BE in sewer pipes. So in one way, it shouldn't even matter what the weather is like – storm water shouldn't really mix with sewage at all.

But during a rainstorm, water seeps into your broken lateral pipe, and all your neighbors' pipes, and that rainwater mixes with sewage in the sewer pipes, and the volume of water/sewage can actually build up far beyond the capacity of the sewer pipe. And in the same way, thousands and thousands of gallons of water mixed in with the sewage can swamp a treatment plant during a rainstorm.

That's the number one concern of sewage treatment plants now. And the sewer districts need your help.

Those laterals are owned by homeowners. They're on private land, so the district can't just go in there and tear them up to replace or fix them.

However, most sewer districts offer a service where they will inspect your laterals to check for leaks, and many have started programs where the district will help pay the cost of repairing or replacing those pipes.

Sewer systems are run by local municipalities. Most communities have a local sewer district, and officials at the district can help you inspect and fix your lateral pipes.

Listen to the Sewage Spills Increasing radio report online.

In our radio story, we feature the stylishly high tech Vineyard 29 and the Robert Mondavi Winery, but scores of other wineries are using a similar toolbox of technology to help them monitor the soil's water content to grow better grapes. The technology ends up conserving water, too. Remote sensing, ground penetrating radar and satellite technology have helped Mondavi cut back on water use by 30% in recent years.

Winemakers are using some of the same technology that NASA uses to study Mars and engineers use to build hi-rises and freeways. A typical toolbox includes multi-spectral imaging, weather stations, neutron moisture probes, and pressure bombs and there is a plethora of newer technologies in the pipeline. But enough with all the high tech gizmos. How does wine from high tech vines taste? The answer might be found in the success of the winery. Mondavi has won numerous awards over the years and there is a two-year waiting list just to purchase Vineyard 29 wines.

Check out our slide show to see some of these technologies or listen to our radio report on high tech in the vineyards.

Sea level rise scenarios for San Francisco International Airport.
Click the map to see a larger image.

The most recent estimate looks pretty dire. The Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC), a state planning agency, says it expects San Francisco Bay to rise about 16 inches by 2050, and 55 inches by the end of the century.

The map on this page shows what San Francisco International Airport and the surrounding area would look like, if the bay rose a meter (roughly 36 inches). You can check other maps around the bay as well.

And the real danger of that big rise in bay waters happens during storm season. High tides and storm surges could send that higher water inland, flooding Highway 101 and neighborhoods along the bay. If the bay runs right up to the edge of development and we build sea walls to protect property, then that deep pool of water will have much higher waves, stronger currents and will pound the shoreline much harder than where there is now graduated wetlands. The effect, experts say, would be similar to what happens when you churn up water in a bathtub, and the wave energy quickly builds up and spills over the sides.

Part of the challenge in BCDC’s design competition is to come up with barriers that might absorb some of the power of those waves, instead of simply deflecting those waves with straight walls.

Listen to the Redesigning the Bay radio report online.

The Stanford Linear Accelerator. Credit: SLAC.

Luckily, there is a particle accelerator right here in the Bay Area. Last year, I took an intrepid group down to the Stanford Linear Accelerator (SLAC) to learn more about the these giant expensive research labs.

SLAC maintains an extensive public outreach program. An extensive tour (mine was 2 hours with very in-depth exploration of the facility), public lectures, weekly colloquia, and even science competitions for high schoolers.

I was surprised to find a wealth of research beyond the typical particle colliding at the facility. Many researchers use the state of the art facilities to study basic elements of our life, including water.

On Tuesday, Anders Nilsson is discussing his research on water at SLAC, an in-depth look at some of the stranger properties of water: its high heat capacity, how it is more dense than ice, even insight on using water as a power source (by splitting it into hydrogen and oxygen). Water: The Strangest Liquid, Tuesday February 24th 730-830PM at the Stanford Linear Accelerator.

However, our continued economics woes are threatening physical science research. SLAC is getting the brunt of money cut, missing out on $23 million of requested funding. In response, SLAC laid off 125 of its 1600 employees and shut down its PEP-II collider last year.

SLAC Public Lecture Series
The SLAC Public Lecture Series opens the doors to the inner workings of SLAC for the local nonscientific community. Find out what SLAC is all about: the research, the facilities, and the people that make this a world-class research institute.

SLAC Colloquium
The intellectual watering hole for the entire laboratory, where you can hear talks intended for a general audience on a wide variety of subjects. The colloquium will be returning later this year.

SLAC Science Bowl for High School Students
SLAC hosts an annual Regional Science Bowl for teams of high school students. The Science Bowl is a question-and-answer competition with buzzers, judges, and time keepers for high school teams of 5 students and 1 faculty coach. This year's competition is on February 28th.

SLAC Tour Information
Tours of SLAC will be available again later this year. On the tour, you get an extensive look at the operation of the accelerator, including a peek into the Klystron Gallery.

The Truckee River Canyon. Credit: Michael Conner.

Natural capital isn't something we hear about very often, and it certainly isn't a new idea. Aldo Leopold and other conservationists recognized the role that natural ecosystems play in our lives as early as the 1940's. But understanding and measuring that role hasn't been easy. That's where the Natural Capital Project comes in.

The project focuses on ecosystem services – the natural processes that ecosystems provide and humans benefit from. Those include how forests filter our drinking water, how wetlands provide protection from storm surges, and how bees and other pollinators support our agricultural industry. While these services may not be the first thing you think of when it comes to nature, researchers are discovering that they're vital to human health and decision makers are starting to factor that it.

A few examples:

In the 1990's, New York City's water quality dropped below EPA standards. The obvious option was to built a new water filtration plant – with a hefty price tag: $6-8 billion for construction and $300 million in yearly operating expenses. Instead, the city decided to invest in the natural processes that help keep water clean. That meant looking upstream to the Catskills watershed where intact ecosystems could help filter the water. The city bought land upstream and improved sewer treatment plants – all at a much lower price: $1-1.5 billion.

In China, the Yangtze River Basin experienced devastating floods in 1998. Many believed the vast deforestation of the surrounding area had been the major cause, since it had eliminated the natural buffer that existed. Since then, the Chinese Government has adopted a system of ecosystem payments – giving subsidies to farmers to plant trees and preserve forested areas.  All in all, their program in budgeted in the billions.

The Natural Capital project has created an online tool known as InVEST that's freely available to the public. It allows users to map ecosystem services in any landscape. The project's co-found Gretchen Daily is hopeful that the tool will make it much easier for natural capital to be part of land use decision-making – especially in countries where development pressures are strong. "It's stunning to see how rapidly things are changing globally. We're losing trillions of dollars of value in natural capital in the form of rain forests and other key natural assets" Daily said. The project is already working with the government of Colombia to use InVEST and to improve their resource permitting process. You can read more about where else they're working here.

Listen to the Putting a Price on Nature radio report online.

Artist concept of the Phoenix lander,
sleeping under the darkening polar skies of Martian autumn.

But that was last May, and Phoenix has operated near Mars' northern polar ice cap going on six months now! The mission has continued a couple months longer than originally planned, giving Phoenix more time to dig in the icy soil, bake scooped up samples to detect what chemicals sublimate, track the polar weather day and night, and look to the skies with its various instruments.

Phoenix sent back some very interesting news. Indeed, it had landed on what turned out to be dust-coated water ice; ice that contains chemicals like calcite and perchlorate– the former of which may indicate past liquid water on Mars, the latter of which, however, is generally toxic, and may complicate arguments for life, past or present, on Mars.

One of the more "fanciful" detections by Phoenix was falling snow: two or three miles above, Phoenix detected ice crystals falling from clouds– albeit flakes that never made it to the ground, instead evaporating like Earthly virga back into the atmosphere.

But Phoenix’s mission has a built-in conclusion (unlike the seemingly perpetual Energizer Bunnies exploring the Martian tropics, aka the Mars Exploration Rovers). Phoenix landed at 68 degrees north latitude– that’s equivalent on Earth to the north coast of Alaska, Norway, or south central Greenland– prior to Martian northern summer solstice (which was June 25). As with Earthly summertime, the polar days were unending, the Sun above the horizon 24 hours a day (yes, Mars' day is about 24 hours long, just as on Earth). This provided Phoenix with its electrical power, generated by photovoltaic panels.

But now the Sun is dipping below the horizon several hours a day as the Martian northern hemisphere slides in the direction of autumnal equinox (December 26, 2008), at which time the Sun will spend half the time below the horizon, the other half never rising very high. Already, Phoenix's solar panels are generating considerably less power than in the heyday of its mission. A dust storm, filling the air and blocking some of the already weak sunlight, has also cut available power to the lander for a time in October.

The diminishing conditions also caused Phoenix to put itself into an automatic "sleep" mode in late October, waking up for only a short time each day, when solar energy was at a peak. To give a flavor of the temperatures Phoenix is enduring, on Sol 151 (the 151^st Martian day since landing-October 27^th, Earth time), the daily high reached a balmy 50.8 degrees F-negative 50.8 that is! The night time low hit -128 degrees F… .

With every day possibly being the last we hear from Phoenix, scientists are collecting as much data as possible, mostly focusing on meteorological conditions. Reporting from the Martian polar ice cap, as the icy darkness of winter begins to settle in, this is Phoenix Lander, signing off….