An Antique All-rounder: Environments in Profile

 Environments in Profile 

An Aquatic Perspective

By W. Michael Kaill & John K. Frey

I have a weakness for unusual-looking books. So when I was scanning the Environmental Science section of the TNAU Library and found the top-edge of a book staring at me instead of the spine, I had to pull it out. 

Lo! I was holding Environments in Profile - An Aquatic Perspective (90910), written by Michael Kaill and John Frey of Stockton, California. Fun thing was that it was in landscape mode, which is why the spine was face-down so the book could be fitted in the rack. Published in 1973 and printed in the USA, the book has visibly lived in the library for a very long time, presumably before I was born!

Spoiler alert: There is absolutely nothing to spoil in this book!

If you are studying about the environment and have been exposed to some basic lab tests like pH, turbidity and BOD, then Environments in Profile doesn't hold anything new for you. 

But if you are studying about the environment and have been exposed to some basic lab tests like pH, turbidity and BOD, then Environments in Profile is a must-read for you!

Don't you get frustrated when you spend hours trying to understand a concept but it refuses to come intuitively to you? After trying a few more times you give up and forget about it for a few days/weeks. Then all of a sudden, the thing you were poring over to learn unexpectedly finds itself a place in your brain and it's like it has always been there! Sometimes you question your understanding but eventually it something you don't need to sit and learn anymore.

This is what Environments in Profile - An Aquatic Perspective does to you!

So here's the compressed review, in the authors' own words (^^) from the preface:

Environments in Profile has a clear purpose. It is not another ecology textbook, nor is it an attempt to duplicate the impressive keys and guides to freshwater biology already available. It is a simple, non-mathematical, concise means of putting together the many approaches that compose the discipline of ecology.

Although the emphasis is more on ecology and biology, there is a fair share of chemistry and water analysis. This sure helps in ENS and SWE (water-related) courses. 

What I love about the book is the way concepts, especially definitions have been worded differently. It's like you unjumbled a password to actually understanding something. Check this out:

Oxygen is used in respiration as an essential element in the metabolic process of oxidation - a burning of fuel (food). The chemical structures of fats, carbohydrates, and proteins in the food contain long, high-energy, carbon chains. These carbon chains release energy as they are broken down into smaller units under the action of physiological enzyme systems. The resulting low-energy carbon is then combined with oxygen to produce carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide acts as a means of carrying the waste, low-energy carbon, out of the animal's system. It is interesting to consider that mammalian systems do not regulate breathing rate according to a need for oxygen, but on a need to get rid of the carbon dioxide dissolved in the bloodstream.

See that?! I wish I could go back to being a sixth-grader and reframe my answer to "Why do athletes breathe faster when they run?"

The book is divided into three parts: 

The Conceptual Background talks about what we have learnt in school - food chains, food webs, niche, populations and succession. Beware though, I picked up the insightful paragraph above from this section, so there's always room to strengthen concepts.

Grab your lab-coats and Erlenmeyer (conical) flasks, droppers and burettes for next the authors take us to the Ecology Laboratory! Here we re-learn all about temperature, turbidity, chlorides, salts, buffer systems, dissolved oxygen, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), phosphates, nitrates, biological tests, total coliforms and ecological experiments. 

The blessing about this section is the low-formula approach and more emphasis on the test mechanics and the boxes at the sides containing ultra-valuable information. I feel like carrying out these tests again!

Test mechanics for chloride ion test: The silver from the silver nitrate combines with the chloride being measured to form a white precipitate. When the chlorine is used up, the silver is free to combine with the chromate indicator to produce a pink-orange end-point, silver chromate.

This is the best explanation of titration I have ever come across: In many water quality tests, chemical reactions are used. The amount of chemical necessary to "use up" or complete a reaction often tells us the concentration of a substance in the sample. For example, in the dissolved oxygen test, iodine is substituted for oxygen. Then the amount of thiosulphate needed to "use up" all of the iodine tells us how much oxygen was originally in the solution. Titrations are done using a burette (a slender glass tube with measurements of volume marked down its length). A valve at the bottom (usually a stopcock) allows closely controlled amounts to be released into a measured volume of sample. When the reaction is complete, something "happens" - usually a colour change or precipitate. This "happening" is the end-point. There are ways of determining when the end-point is near. Usually the end-point reaction will occur in the immediate vicinity of the titrant as it goes into the solution. Then as the solution is swirled, the reaction (i.e., colour change, precipitate, etc.) vanishes. This should serve as a warning to decrease the rate of titration. When the end-point is reached, the stopcock is closed, and the amount of chemical used to reach that end-point is recorded, and translated into amounts of substance (i.e., oxygen) that was in the original sample. 

Fishes, plankton and benthos, something we don't really learn in great detail are also covered here with multiple illustrations of both the sampling instruments and the organisms.

Bookworm (see the hole in the page) meets Roundworm!

A chapter on terrestrial biology too.

In the final chapter of this section, the authors introduce "Environmental profiles", as an effort to maintain the ecosystem viewpoint while dealing with the necessary unit approaches of field work. It should assist development of the ability to appreciate the environment as a whole. I seriously loved this technique and the really cool graphical results it gives:

Oligotrophic environment

Mesotrophic environment

Eutrophic environment

The copy of this book I have is so old that the library has rebound it in a green hardcover (which exactly matches my phone cover and my uniform overcoat:). As a result, the cover photograph by Ernest Braun is gone. Another misfortune is that the multiple copies of the blank profile chart (inside back cover) for organising data from field observations have also been permanently lost.

The third and final part of the book is the Appendix and this is not your average appendix of units and references. It contains crisp information on the materials required for each test explained before and techniques to handle equipment. I was completely awed by two pieces of equipment mentioned here and looked up tutorials on them!

Kemmerer sampler

Sedgewick-Rafter chamber

Here you will also observe the authors making curt remarks when it comes to field trips and their planning:

Student involvement is enhanced when everyone participates in all aspects of the trip. It is not doing a student a service to train him to expect the equipment to appear when needed.

A trip that begins with a minimum of confusion is off to a good start.

There should be a definite break for lunch together; otherwise the group effort will fragment.

A standardised note-taking procedure will pay off on unexpected ways. With practice, notes should say more with less effort.

They also warn that seemingly small but irresponsible actions during field trips can cause cascading damage to the ecosystem.

I literally can't wait for the next trip/visit now! 

If you've read my reviews for other books, you'll see that I have written quite a bit about the authors. For Environments in Profile, I was not able to find anything about Michael Kaill except that he was faculty at the University of the Pacific. I checked the online memorial records of the university but there was no mention of Kaill. All I could unearth about John Frey is from his obituary - he passed away in 2021. He graduated from the University of the Pacific and this book is the brainchild of his Masters research project under Kaill. He was known for his exemplary teaching and lab-core curriculum.

I think this is what magic means. Two people, Michael and John, decided to write a book that explains things for a change. They teach their students and live out their lives. Half-a-century later someone called Yazhini in a library on another continent lays hands on the book and its contents are just as relevant, maybe even more, given our growing environmental concerns. She enjoys the book and the fact that it is a rare specimen, and finally returns it to the library, but not before suggesting Environments in Profile to a friend Jeeva who is working on constructed wetland project.