Environmental Enlightenment

Environmental Enlightenment #220 — An ecosystem is a community of living organisms (plants, animals and microbes) in conjunction with nonliving components.

Environmental Enlightenment #302 Unconsolidated soil and rocks, when filled with water, make aquifers. Aquifers are subsurface formations of soil and rock that are saturated with water. Aquifers are made of pores and particles. The groundwater fills the pores.  Some...

Environmental Enlightenment #320—Sustainability is how ecosystems remain diverse and productive.

Environmental Enlightenment #318USEPA defines wetlands as areas that are inundated or saturated by surface or ground water at a frequency and duration sufficient to support, and that under normal  circumstances do support, a prevalence of vegetation typically adapted...

Environmental Enlightenment #319—The ATSDR ToxFAQs™ is a series of summaries about hazardous substances. Each fact sheet serves as a quick and easy to understand guide.

Environmental Enlightenment #317Nowadays, most transactions in commercial and industrial properties employ the Phase I Environmental Site Assessments to ascertain potentail risks to public health and the environment from non-optimal conditions of contaminated soil,...

Environmental Enlightenment #306 Here’s a simplified, conceptual image of the fate of leaking petroleum fluids in soil and groundwater. It omits certain phenomena that the pedantic amongst us may fault me on; and my justification is, it’s being done for sake of the...

Environmental Enlightenment #185Plume can mean various things. The word comes from Latin pluma, meaning small soft feather. Here are some eagle plumes.A plume is also a feather or bunch of feathers worn as an ornament or a mark of rank(Picture courtesy of...

Environmental Enlightenment #316—How will California’s new vapor intrusion guidelines affect your property value and transaction?

Environmental Enlightenment #315—Current and historical oil field operations may have issues that can impact real estate transactions. Oil fields in Los Angeles basin provide countless examples.

Environmental Enlightenment #314—Real-estate brokers, attorneys and investors can glide through ENVIROSTOR fast to identify items of interest about properties in California.

Environmental Enlightenment #219—Here’s a data-packed site that provides handy information on environmental data at sites of interest.

Environmental Enlightenment #312 Gradient is the inclination of a riverbed, usually described as the number of feet the river drops per mile. Water flows downhill. Always? Take a close look at the water in the creek as it bounces from rock to rock on the way down and...

Environmental Enlightenment #235 ​Asserting oneself an expert bears responsibility. What is an expert? Here are thoughts, humbly submitted for your inspection. Expertise is a graduated, spirally climbing scale, ever returning to itself at higher and higher plateaus....

Environmental Enlightenment #245Probability is the extent to which something is probable; the likelihood of something happening or being the case. (Google) Probability is a scale of certainty: How certain is it that an undeveloped piece of land will be contaminated...