LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – General COVID-19 information is widely available, but what are the risks, and what is being done in Lake County?
What can you do to protect your community – your family?
Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace, MD, MPH, wants community members to have the information they need to make the healthiest choices possible.
He also needs the community’s help. Keeping COVID-19 from gaining a foothold in Lake County is a team effort, and everyone needs to do their part.
At 6 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, Dr. Pace will host a virtual town hall meeting live on the county of Lake Facebook page.
Public officials will answer questions and provide valuable updates. Health care and other community partners will be invited to participate as well.
Please send questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. by Monday, March 30, at noon. Include “COVID-19 Town Hall” in the subject line.
Whether or not the panelists are able to address every question in the live meeting, the public’s input will help guide future information sharing, and community participation is appreciated.
For those who are not Facebook members, video will also be available via the county’s Granicus feed.
Mediacom subscribers can additionally access the COVID-19 Town Hall via channel 8, Lake County PEG TV.
If you still have questions, send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 707-263-8174 during business hours.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – March 2020 marks a milestone for Community Care’s Senior Information & Assistance Program.
In 2006 the program expanded its service area to include older adults in all of Mendocino and Lake counties.
Each year it has responded to the questions of an average of 384 individuals, and approximately 293 of those annual inquirers have been first-time callers.
Now in its 14th year of speaking with older adults and their loved ones from Point Arena to Clearlake Oaks, Senior Information & Assistance is pleased to report that it has served over 4,000 unique individuals.
Funded through the Area Agency on Aging of Lake & Mendocino Counties, and with the longtime support of the T.R. Eriksen Foundation, Senior Information & Assistance not only offers referrals to callers about available programs and services for older adults, it also checks back with them to see if they were able to make a connection to those supports.
This followup component is one of the things that brings callers back to Community Care months and years later as new needs and questions arise.
To learn more about area resources for adults ages 60 and older, contact Senior Information & Assistance Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. by calling 707-468-5132 or 1-800-510-2020, or visit www.SeniorResourceDirectory.org .
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – During a special virtual meeting on Friday afternoon, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved an ad hoc committee’s recommendations regarding which county workers can be considered nonessential and allowed to work from home or take leave during the COVID-19 shelter in place order.
The board met online for just over an hour on Friday to take up the recommendations as well as to consider approval of an agreement for an alternate health officer.
Regarding the workers’ definitions, board members reported receiving calls and emails from community members who were concerned that the board was laying out rules for all county workers, including those employed by private businesses.
However, the supervisors emphasized that wasn’t the case, that they were looking specifically at the employees of the county of Lake.
County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson told the board that an ad hoc committee that the board assigned to look at the nonessential workers’ definition met and came up with the recommendations.
The committee consists of Huchingson, Board Chair Moke Simon, Supervisor Bruno Sabatier and County Counsel Anita Grant.
She said the ad hoc committee focused on two key goals that guided their decision-making: safety of employees and compliance with the countywide shelter in place order.
“This is an extraordinary time when we are in crisis,” she said.
Huchingson also emphasized that the term “nonessential” wasn’t a correlation whatsoever to specific workers’ value in the county workforce. Rather, it’s a term being used during the shelter in place order.
She said the committee found that, because of the shelter in place order, the county government must focus on critical duties essential to continuing operations or maintaining critical infrastructure.
General office workers who conduct clerical and support work have been determined to be nonessential during the disaster and should shelter in place. Huchingson said they will be able to work remotely when possible, and where it’s not feasible, they’re to be offered the chance to work as disaster service workers at the county emergency operations center or to shelter in place at home and wait to resume their duties.
The committee recommended the board give department heads flexibility in determining nonessential workers, Huchingson said.
She said the committee also recommended the board direct department heads to immediately send workers they have determined to be nonessential home to shelter in place, and authorize them to periodically adjust their determinations of nonessential workers as the situation warrants.
Department heads also are being told to provide remote work assignments to nonessential workers when feasible, offer disaster service work or approve such employees’ use of accruals and other leave benefits while sheltering in place and not working, Huchingson said.
The recommendations included having the ad hoc committee continue to be available to work with county department heads on any issues and return to the board after meeting again no later than April 14, she said.
In response to a question submitted by Lake County News about whether or not the county had a total number or percentage of how many employees are considered nonessential under the new guidelines, Huchingson said they didn’t have that information yet, as it varies by department. She said the situation is fluid and changing as the disaster continues.
Sheriff Brian Martin, who also was present online, said 7 percent of his department has been determined to be nonessential, and half of them will be working remotely.
“It’s not going to be a mass exodus of employees,” he said of his department.
The board approved the recommendations unanimously.
They also voted to amend their previously approved resolution relating to workplace safety, employee leave and remote work in response to COVID-19.
Huchingson recommended removing Section No. 3 of the earlier version of the ordinance, which states, “In order to protect members of the public, staff and the broader community, if any individual appears at a County facility presenting symptoms of COVID-19, County staff shall require they do not enter the facility, provided staff can deliver services through alternative procedures, such as via telephone and/or web-based means.”
She said that in light of the new determinations made about nonessential workers needing to shelter in place and not come to the county offices, the original resolution no longer applies and may be confusing.
The board also took separate action to direct all department heads to immediately cease business practices which involve bringing the public into the Lake County Courthouse unless they have made special arrangements, subject to Huchingson’s approval, to ensure employee and workplace safety.
In other business, Health Services Director Denise Pomeroy asked for the board’s approval of appointing Dr. Charlie Evans as the county’s designated alternate Public Health officer and to approve a professional services agreement with him.
The agreement’s term is from March 1, 2020, to June 30, 2021. It calls for paying Evans for services on a monthly basis, not to exceed $10,000 for the agreement’s term.
Pomeroy said she had been working on the proposal with Dr. Evans for the last few months.
Her written report to the board explained that Evans graduated with honors from University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine in 1982 and has more than 38 years of medical experience, including work in emergency medicine, family medicine and public health, specializing in tuberculosis control.
She said Evans has worked previously with Lake County Public Health Officer Dr. Gary Pace.
Pomeroy had asked for the matter to be expedited because “it’s going to be a long haul.” Her written report said Pace had been working 12 hours days, seven days a week, and the goal was to have backup and assistance available for Pace, as well as allow him to take a day off.
She also pointed out that the Marin County Public Health officer has come down with COVID-19, and larger counties have deputy health officers available to step in as backup.
Pomeroy said it’s important to have backup for Pace, as the COVID-19 situation could last several months.
The board unanimously approved Pomeroy’s requests to appoint Evans as the designated alternate Public Health officer and approved the contract with him.
Board Chair Moke Simon noted during the meeting, “This is going to be a long-term battle,” adding, “This is probably just the beginning.”
Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.
Most recently, it began an unprecedented effort to ensure banks, companies and now households have all the money they need by offering to buy unlimited amounts of securities, including bundled student loans and credit card debt. Even at the peak of the financial crisis in 2008, the Fed’s actions were much more limited in scope – as well as speed.
My colleagues and I at the Indiana Business Research Center have been studying the Fed, its actions and the economic impact for over a quarter-century. Here’s a quick primer on the U.S. central bank, how it works and what it’s doing to keep the economy from sinking into depression.
No guarantee of safety
Before Congress created the Federal Reserve System, the safety and soundness of U.S. banks was hardly a sure thing.
Bank runs – when a large number of customers withdraw their deposits simultaneously over concerns of a bank’s solvency – were common, such as during the Gilded Age from 1863 to 1907, when financial crises occurred frequently.
Yet many Americans were uncomfortable with the idea of a powerful central financial authority. Alexander Hamilton’s short-lived First Bank of the United States, which was “dominated by big banking and money interests,” did little to help to allay those concerns.
Without a central bank, it fell to private financiers like John Pierpont Morgan to avert financial crises by infusing their own capital into the economy. Recurring crises like these eventually led more people to believe that monetary policy and banking should be centralized, culminating in the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
The act said the Fed would handle monetary policy and stimulus, keep banks safe and sound, and make sure the amount of money circulating was appropriate.
While initially successful at limiting bank runs, the Fed failed to prevent the speculative bubble that preceded the Great Depression – and the bankruptcy of nearly 10,000 banks. This led to the Glass-Steagall Act in 1933, which separated commercial and investment banking and created federal deposit insurance to prevent bank runs.
Congress more clearly delineated the Fed’s purpose in 1977, when it passed the Federal Reserve Reform Act and established what became known as the “dual mandate” of maximum employment and stable prices.
It continues to perform other functions in line with its founding purpose, such as identifying and neutralizing risks to the economy, protecting consumers and promoting the soundness of the financial system and individual institutions.
The Fed’s two key tools
The Fed consists of a group of seven economists – collectively known as the Board of Governors – who have two key tools to affect monetary policy. The Board of Governors uses 12 regional banks of the Federal Reserve System to perform banking services.
The most well-known tool is the Fed’s ability to set short-term interest rates. When it lowers rates, the Fed aims to reduce borrowing costs for companies and consumers to encourage more lending and investment, thus stimulating the economy. It raises rates primarily when the economy is strong, when it wants to keep a lid on inflation.
The other key tool is its ability to buy and sell debt securities in open-market operations.
The Fed used this tool for the first time in 1923 ostensibly to stem a recession. By buying Treasury securities from private sellers, it was able to pump more money into the banking system, ensuring there was enough cheap credit for borrowers.
So it turned to its second tool and committed to essentially buy as many securities as necessary to stave off mass layoffs, debt defaults, bankruptcies and depression. This includes buying bundles of investment-grade corporate bonds, student loans and credit card debt for the first time.
As a result, the Fed’s balance sheet, which had fallen below $4 trillion last year, has now swelled to a new record of $4.7 trillion – and could double in size before it’s done, based on the new lending authority it’s being granted by the federal bailout.
LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Library’s grant-funded Zip Books program that delivers books, large print books and audiobooks to library patrons at home continues to operate during the COVID19 shelter-in-place order.
You must have a Lake County Library card and a Lake County mailing address to order a Zip Book through the Lake County Library.
With your Lake County Library card you can submit Zip Book requests through the Zip Book order form on the library’s website, http://library.lakecountyca.gov , under the “Books and More” tab.
If you don’t have a Lake County Library card, you can apply for a temporary library card number and PIN on the library’s website.
If you have any questions about Zip Books call 707-263-8817 and leave a message or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . An employee will respond to your message.
The library orders the book from Amazon and the book is delivered to your mailing address. During the COVID19 emergency, Amazon deliveries may take a little longer than normal, so have patience.
The Zip Book is also checked out on your library card. When you finish reading your book, please hold it until the library reopens.
Hand-deliver your Zip Book to a library employee, along with any Amazon paperwork that comes with it. Library due dates have been extended and any fines accrued during the shelter in place order will be waived.
Zip Books patrons can request a maximum of five books per month. At present, the Zip Books policy that prevents libraries from ordering books that they already own has been temporarily suspended.
Zip Books is a statewide project of the NorthNet Library System, funded by the California State Library. The Lake County Library has participated in Zip Books since 2015.
Jan Cook is a library technician for the Lake County Library.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – In an effort to help the county’s schoolchildren during the extended school closure related to COVID-19, the Lake County Office of Education has announced a partnership that will offer students new resources.
“When children aren’t in school for extended periods of time, they’re at risk of losing academic gains,” said Lake County Superintendent of Schools Brock Falkenberg.
“We are proud to announce that the Lake County Office of Education has partnered with Age of Learning to provide free home access to ABCmouse, Adventure Academy, and ReadingIQ to all Lake County families because of school dismissals due to the coronavirus outbreak,” Falkenberg said.
Lake County families can have access to these home education resources by going to www.lakecoe.org/COVID-19 and clicking on “Educational Resources.”
“Interruptions in learning due to unanticipated events such as school dismissals can have adverse impacts on children’s academic growth and development, as well as on their need for stability and consistency,” explained Falkenberg.
“When in-school learning isn’t possible, using research-based digital education programs at home can help children stay engaged, provide them with valuable learning experiences, and allow them to maintain some continuity in their lives,” he said.
Age of Learning is providing free home access to Lake County families to ABCmouse, Adventure Academy, and ReadingIQ.
ABCmouse.com Early Learning Academy is a comprehensive, research-validated, award-winning curriculum for preschool through second grade, available on all major digital platforms and used by tens of millions of children to date.
Adventure Academy, the first-of-its-kind educational massively multiplayer online game, serves elementary- and middle-school-aged children with thousands of literacy, math, science, and social studies learning activities in a fun and safe virtual world.
ReadingIQ is an award-winning digital library and literacy platform for children 12 and under-designed by reading experts to improve literacy skills, with many thousands of expert-curated books from leading publishers.
Falkenberg encourages all Lake County families with children to go to visit www.lakecoe.org/COVID-19 and sign up to make the most of these valuable, free resources from our partner, Age of Learning.
NORTH COAST, Calif. – California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials are searching for two minimum-security inmates who walked away from the California Correctional Center Eel River Conservation Camp in Humboldt County Friday evening.
During an inmate count at around 9:45 p.m. on March 27, staff discovered inmate Derek Barnett, 29 and Noah Wilson, 28 were not in their assigned bunks. A search of the camp buildings and grounds was immediately conducted, officials said.
CDCR said the men were last seen at approximately 8:30 p.m. Friday Both were wearing grey sweatshirts, grey sweat pants and white tennis shoes.
CDCR’s Office of Correctional Safety, Cal Fire, the California Highway Patrol and local law enforcement agencies have been notified and are assisting in the search.
Barnett was assigned as a porter and Wilson was assigned as a cook at the camp, which houses approximately 120 minimum-custody inmates.
CDCR told Lake County News that they are continuing to search for the two inmates, and asking people around the region to be on the lookout.
Barnett is a white male, 5 feet 10 inches tall, weighing 272 pounds with brown eyes, black hair, a mustache and goatee. He was received on Feb. 7, 2019, from Placer County, sentenced to four and eight months for possession of a firearm and vehicle theft. He was scheduled to parole in December.
Wilson is a white male, 5 feet 11 inches tall, weighing 200 pounds with hazel eyes, brown hair, a mustache and goatee, with a tattoo “Damaged” above his right eye. He was received from San Bernardino County on July 9, 2019, sentenced to four years for possession of a controlled substance for sale. He was scheduled to parole in April 2021.
Anyone who sees Barnett or Wilson should contact 911 or law enforcement authorities immediately.
Anyone having information about or knowledge of the location of Barnett or Wilson should contact the CCC watch commander at 530-257-2181, Extension 4173.
As the author of threebooksabout essayist, poet and philosopher Henry David Thoreau, I highly recommend “Walden,” Thoreau’s 1854 account of his time living “alone” in the woods outside Concord, Massachusetts. I qualify “alone” because Thoreau had more company at Walden than in town, and hoed a bean field daily as social theater in full view of passersby on the road.
Published in over 1,000 editions and translated into scores of languages, “Walden” is the scriptural fountainhead of the modern environmental movement, a philosophical treatise on self-reliance and a salient volume of the American literary canon. In his introduction to the Princeton edition, John Updike claims that Thoreau’s masterpiece “contributed most to America’s present sense of itself” during the cultural renaissance of the mid-19th century, yet “risks being as revered and unread as the Bible.”
Another reason to read or reread “Walden” during trying times is that it gushes with sorely needed optimism and is laced with wit. And Thoreau befriends you by writing in the first person.
Reality lies within us
As governments mandate social distancing to protect public health, many readers may be coming to grips with solitude. Thoreau devotes a chapter to it, extolling the virtue of getting to know yourself really well.
“Why should I feel lonely?” he asks, “is not our planet in the Milky Way?” Elsewhere he clarifies the difference between what we need and what we think we need, writing, “My greatest skill has been to want but little.”
“Walden” doesn’t have to be read straight through like a novel. For readers who have previously given up on it, I suggest rebooting in the middle with “The Ponds,” which opens thus: “Sometimes, having had a surfeit of human society and gossip, and worn out all my village friends, I rambled still farther westward than I habitually dwell…” Thoreau then retreats away from the mindless distractions of community life toward an immersion into Nature, with water at its spiritual center.
Next, flip back to the earlier chapter “Where I Lived and What I Lived For.” Here Thoreau invites readers on a downward journey, from the fleeting shallows of their social lives to the solid depths of their individual lives:
“Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through Church and State, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality…”
Our brains build that reality – yours, mine, everyone’s – by integrating external sensory signals with internal memories. Thoreau’s point – which is supported by 21st-century cognitive and neuroscience research – is that the real you precedes the social you. Your world is built from the inside of your skull outward, not vice versa.
The elusive simple life
Thoreau’s retreat to Walden Pond is often mistaken for a hermit’s flight deep into the woods. Actually, Thoreau put some distance between himself and his home and village so that he could understand himself and society better. When not in town, he swapped human companionship for the “beneficent society” of Nature for long enough to make “the fancied advantages of human neighborhood insignificant.”
Today mandatory social distancing is wrecking the global economy, based on traditional metrics like gross domestic product and stock prices. Viewed through “Walden,” this wreckage may look like a long-overdue correction for an unsustainable system.
Thoreau feared that the economy he saw was headed in the wrong direction. His opening chapter, “Economy,” is an extended rant against what he viewed as a capitalistic, urbanizing, consumption-driven, fashion-conscious 19th-century New England.
Of his neighbors, Thoreau wrote, “By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book” – meaning the Christian Bible – “laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
In contrast, his recipe for a good economy is one of “Walden”‘s most famous quotes: “Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand.”
That was easier said than done, even for Thoreau. When he conceived “Walden,” he was an unemployed, landless idealist. By the time it was published, he lived in a big house that was heated with Appalachian coal, earning income by manufacturing pulverized graphite and surveying for land developers.
Since then, the world’s population has more than quintupled and developed nations have built a global economy approaching US$100 trillion per year. Human impacts on the planet have become so powerful that scientists have coined the term Anthropocene to describe our current epoch.
Finding perspective in solitude
Some Americans have tried at least halfheartedly to follow “Walden”’s idealistic advice by living deliberately, being more self-reliant and shrinking their planetary footprints. Personally, although I’ve downsized my house, walk to work, fly only for funerals and cook virtually every meal from scratch, in my heart I know I’ve also contributed to the world’s swelling population, burn fracked natural gas and am hopelessly embedded in a consumer economy.
Nevertheless, after several weeks of social distancing, I’m rediscovering the value of two of Thoreau’s key points: Solitude is helping me recalibrate what matters most, and the current economic slowdown offers short-term gains and a long-term message for the planet.
These benefits don’t compensate for the incalculable personal losses and grief that COVID-19 is inflicting worldwide. But they are consolation prizes until things stabilize in the new normal. On my daily solitary walk in the woods, I am mindful of Thoreau’s words: “Next to us is not the workman whom we have hired, with whom we love so well to talk, but the workman whose work we are.”
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LAKEPORT, Calif. – The Lake County Sheriff’s Office continues its COVID-19 preparedness efforts at the Lake County Jail facility.
So far, there are no suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Lake County Jail and none in the county at large, officials said.
As of Friday, March 27, and continuing until further notice, the sheriff’s office said the public will not be admitted into the jail reception area to drop off money orders for inmates. The money orders will need to be sent by mail.
The commissary program will continue as normal. The money orders sent by mail will be credited to the inmate’s books. Only money orders will be accepted; cash will not be accepted, officials said.
The sheriff’s office said money orders must be filled out as follows: the inmate’s legal name must be written on the recipient line, the sender’s name and address must be written on the purchaser line and they must be signed by the sender on the front.
The mailing address for the Lake County Jail is 4913 Helbush Drive, Lakeport, CA 95453.
“We look forward to resuming normal operations as soon as it can be done safely. Staff at the Lake County Sheriff’s Office continue their efforts to ensure the safety and security of the people who live and work in our jail,” Lt. Corey Paulich said in an update on the jail situation.
LAKE COUNTY, Calif. – What can anyone do right now during the latest in a series of major disruptions in our lives that affect so very many, but act responsibly and curb all activities away from our homes if at all possible.
Somehow, knowing that “this too, shall pass” like all crises doesn't help most of us much when you add up the ripple-effect of the coronavirus: the cost in lives, the damages to businesses and the economy, as well as the losses of the rich threads of community that weave our lives together in 'normal' times.
Without sounding Pollyannaish, what we do have now though is our hope: hope that the mortality rate will soon drop and nature will balance out in the end, keeping our cherished families and friends safe.
We also have an innate ability to feed our inner strength, rather than nourish the triple beasts of dread, panic and fear.
Also, we have one another, and in the land of 21st-century technology many of us possess the ability to stay connected. And that connection is truly a gift.
Previous to the pandemic I was out on Highway 20 heading toward the Bureau of Land Management’s Cache Creek Wilderness Area.
Just before the Redbud Trailhead sign I was treated to a sighting of Lake County's herd of tule elk.
The big beasts were grazing on grasses along with the aquatic plants in the nearby pond.
Elk have been observed munching on manzanita berries, blue oak branches, oak leaves and scrub oak.
Elk avoid humans and will abandon their favorite grazing grounds if people approach too closely.
The elk herds appear to associate with horses, however, as they have been spotted together on different occasions grazing and even galloping along together, along with tossing their heads in concert with horses.
Deer and elk tend to avoid one another and keep to their own kind. I snapped a few photos of the tule elk and noted their scruffy coats, so I contacted Joshua Bush at the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and asked him about it.
“Overall their coats look pretty good; they can be much scruffier looking,” Bush said. “You are correct that they are not likely molting into their summer coats because it is too early. The disrupted patches of fur you are seeing are likely from rubbing to remove tick or other bugs and rubbing on vegetation in general."
Our tule elk are a native subspecies to California, which should be called super-elk, since they are the only type which can withstand desert conditions.
Smaller and lighter than their cousins the Roosevelt elk and Rocky Mountain elk, the tule elk's population was around half a million before European contact.
Then, they ranged from the Sierra Nevada hillsides to the Pacific Coast, and north to Shasta along with their southern population extending to Kern County.
After the California gold rush tule elk suffered habitat loss with the introduction of non-native plants.
Elk herds had to compete for food with the range cattle and other livestock that were introduced then.
Along with those devastating elk herd disruptions came unregulated hunting that further wiped out tule elk numbers, bringing them to near-extinction.
Thankfully, tule elk hunting was banned in 1873 by the State Legislature.
In 1874 a game warden, A. C Tibbett happened upon a breeding pair of tule elk on cattle rancher Henry Miller's land in the San Joquin Valley, thereby producing evidence that the elk had not been completely decimated as was the fear.
In the 1970s conservation measures for the tule elk were put into place to protect these stately animals.
Now, elk numbers are estimated at about 5,000 with 22 separate populations.
The growing elk population is a true gift, ours to enjoy.
Kathleen Scavone, M.A., is a retired educator, potter, freelance writer and author of “Anderson Marsh State Historic Park: A Walking History, Prehistory, Flora, and Fauna Tour of a California State Park” and “Native Americans of Lake County.”
Eight and a half years into its grand tour of the solar system, NASA’s Voyager 2 spacecraft was ready for another encounter.
It was Jan. 24, 1986, and soon it would meet the mysterious seventh planet, icy-cold Uranus.
Over the next few hours, Voyager 2 flew within 50,600 miles (81,433 kilometers) of Uranus’ cloud tops, collecting data that revealed two new rings, 11 new moons and temperatures below minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 214 degrees Celsius). The dataset is still the only up-close measurements we have ever made of the planet.
Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret.
Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus’s atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet’s one-of-a-kind magnetic environment.
A wobbly magnetic oddball
Planetary atmospheres all over the solar system are leaking into space. Hydrogen springs from Venus to join the solar wind, the continuous stream of particles escaping the Sun. Jupiter and Saturn eject globs of their electrically-charged air. Even Earth’s atmosphere leaks. (Don’t worry, it will stick around for another billion years or so.)
The effects are tiny on human timescales, but given long enough, atmospheric escape can fundamentally alter a planet’s fate. For a case in point, look at Mars.
“Mars used to be a wet planet with a thick atmosphere,” said Gina DiBraccio, space physicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and project scientist for the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, or MAVEN mission. “It evolved over time” — 4 billion years of leakage to space — “to become the dry planet we see today.”
Atmospheric escape is driven by a planet’s magnetic field, which can both help and hinder the process. Scientists believe magnetic fields can protect a planet, fending off the atmosphere-stripping blasts of the solar wind. But they can also create opportunities for escape, like the giant globs cut loose from Saturn and Jupiter when magnetic field lines become tangled. Either way, to understand how atmospheres change, scientists pay close attention to magnetism.
That’s one more reason Uranus is such a mystery. Voyager 2’s 1986 flyby revealed just how magnetically weird the planet is.
“The structure, the way that it moves … ,” DiBraccio said, “Uranus is really on its own.”
Unlike any other planet in our solar system, Uranus spins almost perfectly on its side — like a pig on a spit roast — completing a barrel roll once every 17 hours. Its magnetic field axis points 60 degrees away from that spin axis, so as the planet spins, its magnetosphere — the space carved out by its magnetic field — wobbles like a poorly-thrown football. Scientists still don’t know how to model it.
This oddity drew DiBraccio and her coauthor Dan Gershman, a fellow Goddard space physicist, to the project. Both were part of a team working out plans for a new mission to the 'ice giants' Uranus and Neptune, and they were looking for mysteries to solve. Uranus’ strange magnetic field, last measured more than 30 years ago, seemed like a good place to start.
So they downloaded Voyager 2’s magnetometer readings, which monitored the strength and direction of the magnetic fields near Uranus as the spacecraft flew by. With no idea what they’d find, they zoomed in closer than previous studies, plotting a new datapoint every 1.92 seconds. Smooth lines gave way to jagged spikes and dips. And that’s when they saw it: a tiny zigzag with a big story.
“Do you think that could be … a plasmoid?” Gershman asked DiBraccio, catching sight of the squiggle.
Little known at the time of Voyager 2’s flyby, plasmoids have since become recognized as an important way planets lose mass. These giant bubbles of plasma, or electrified gas, pinch off from the end of a planet’s magnetotail — the part of its magnetic field blown back by the Sun like a windsock. With enough time, escaping plasmoids can drain the ions from a planet’s atmosphere, fundamentally changing its composition. They had been observed at Earth and other planets, but no one had detected plasmoids at Uranus — yet.
DiBraccio ran the data through her processing pipeline and the results came back clean. “I think it definitely is,” she said.
The bubble escapes
The plasmoid DiBraccio and Gershman found occupied a mere 60 seconds of Voyager 2’s 45-hour-long flight by Uranus. It appeared as a quick up-down blip in the magnetometer data. “But if you plotted it in 3D, it would look like a cylinder,” Gershman said.
Comparing their results to plasmoids observed at Jupiter, Saturn and Mercury, they estimated a cylindrical shape at least 127,000 miles (204,000 kilometers) long, and up to roughly 250,000 miles (400,000 kilometers) across. Like all planetary plasmoids, it was full of charged particles — mostly ionized hydrogen, the authors believe.
Readings from inside the plasmoid — as Voyager 2 flew through it — hinted at its origins. Whereas some plasmoids have a twisted internal magnetic field, DiBraccio and Gershman observed smooth, closed magnetic loops. Such loop-like plasmoids are typically formed as a spinning planet flings bits of its atmosphere to space.
“Centrifugal forces take over, and the plasmoid pinches off,” Gershman said. According to their estimates, plasmoids like that one could account for between 15 and 55% of atmospheric mass loss at Uranus, a greater proportion than either Jupiter or Saturn. It may well be the dominant way Uranus sheds its atmosphere to space.
How has plasmoid escape changed Uranus over time? With only one set of observations, it’s hard to say.
“Imagine if one spacecraft just flew through this room and tried to characterize the entire Earth,” DiBraccio said. “Obviously it’s not going to show you anything about what the Sahara or Antarctica is like.”
But the findings help focus new questions about the planet. The remaining mystery is part of the draw. “It’s why I love planetary science,” DiBraccio said. “You’re always going somewhere you don’t really know.”
Miles Hatfield works for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA – Coho salmon are getting a boost from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife strategic plan to prioritize salmon restoration and habitat improvement projects in coastal watersheds from Santa Cruz to Mendocino counties.
In most of these watersheds, coho salmon are in severe decline or locally extinct due to human alterations to land and water resources.
The Priority Action Coho Team, or PACT, is designed to focus much-needed restoration to help maintain, stabilize and increase localized coho salmon populations.
The approach of the PACT initiative is to identify and implement specific short-term actions, drawing from existing state and federal coho salmon recovery plans, to bring immediate benefits.
"PACT employs six strategies emphasizing planning actions and collaboration to accelerate coho salmon recovery from Santa Cruz to Mendocino counties," said Kevin Shaffer, CDFW Branch chief. "We look forward to working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Marine Fisheries Service (NOAA Fisheries) and our many partners on collaborating to recover this amazing fish."
Watersheds where PACT restoration projects are being implemented include Scott Creek in Santa Cruz County and the Russian River in Sonoma County, where a range of projects to restore and improve stream and estuarine habitat have been carried out.
These initiatives include recovery actions such as stream habitat restoration, water conservation, captive rearing and fish rescue, together with improvements to permitting, regulatory and enforcement processes.
PACT was developed jointly by CDFW and NOAA Fisheries, and is part of several initiatives to accelerate the implementation of ecological restoration and stewardship projects in California.
Complimentary efforts include the Cutting the Green Tape initiative recently launched by the California Natural Resources Agency, other state agencies and the North Coast Salmon Project.
More information about the PACT process, as well as the link to the report, can be found on the CDFW website.