Snowfall in an Urban Woodland

Last week we finally made the transition from autumn to winter, after weeks of unseasonable warmth that gave us a brown holiday season and made small children throughout the Chicago region wonder if it would ever snow again.

A "crick" that feeds into Hickory Creek; Pilcher Park, Joliet IL (M. Bryson)

When last week’s storm blew in, I was lucky enough to be deep in a wooded wilderness — rather than stuck in snarled traffic or confined to a windowless office, where we think of snow as irritating or irrelevant, rather than the miracle it is. But I wasn’t on a fancy ski trip at a remote Colorado resort, or  snowshoeing in the northern woods of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; I was right here in Joliet, Illinois, in the middle of a perfectly ordinary weekday.

As I dropped my younger daughter off for pre-school at the Nature Center in Joliet’s Pilcher Park last Thursday morning, the snow began to fall, gently and steadily. The children gathered to start their day in the woods, all bundled up with thick mittens and noisy snow-pants and stout boots, their sense of joy infectious. Instead of lining up quietly as usual, they whooped and ran, skidded and flopped, embracing the snow with the full passion of childhood.

I was inspired, both by the kids’ delightful gamboling and the utter beauty of the woodland scene before me. Normally I leave the park and work dutifully answering email and meeting writing deadlines at the nearby downtown library or Jitters Coffee House before returning to retrieve my four-year-old naturalist. But that day I ignored my to-do list and took a winter ramble in the park as the wet snow coated my glasses and clung to my beard.

I am particularly fond of the Outer Loop trail, which winds through the northernmost and most remote section of Pilcher Park, a hill-and-valley landscape of towering trees and meandering creeks. Though beautiful in any season, the forest now displayed stunning visual complexity: every branch, twig, seed pod, dried stem, and piece of leaf litter was coated with snow; every textured surface outlined in delicate white.

Soon I came to my favorite spot in the park, an overlook marked by a low stone wall. Here one has a commanding view of a broad wooded valley from a sixty-foot-high bluff. The only sounds were the ticking of snow upon my coat, the cheep of a lone sparrow, and the distant whistle of the Rock Island train.

Looping my way back, I meandered along Hickory Creek, which defines the park’s southern border. Few things beguile more than a flowing stream in a snowy woodland, its rippling music foretelling of colder days ahead — when the restless water turns to ice, and the river sleeps with the woods.

Winter in Pilcher Park: Hickory Creek, 19 Jan 2012 (M. Bryson)

In such places, liberated from human noise and litter by the gathering snowfall, one may comprehend the value and special magic of urban wilderness — the wild close at hand, even here in our cities and suburbs.

Yes, winter is here again, with its short days, slower rhythms, cold nights . . . and, at long last, snow. It’s good to see it back.

A version of this essay was published as “Winter Is Back, and It’s Good To See” in my monthly op-ed column for the Joliet Herald-News on 19 January 2012. Download a pdf of Pilcher Park’s Trails to see the park’s extensive trail network for hiking and nature exploration. See more photos of Hickory Creek and Pilcher Park here.

Internship Opportunity at Alliance for a Greener South Loop

Looking for a cool sustainability-themed internship opportunity here in downtown Chicago? Want to hone your research and writing skills in a professional context, while furthering the progressive goals of a local environmental organization? The Alliance for a Greener South Loop (AGSL), an environmental advocacy non-profit dedicated to improving and encouraging green practices in the South Loop neighborhood of Chicago, is seeking an intern this winter/spring to work on the following:

  • Research/document local resources to support green efforts (e.g., buying electricity in Illinois’s open market)
  • Writing up best practices locally (business, residential, and/or institutional) using input from AGSL award applications and further research as needed
  • Answering questions received by residents, organizations, and companies about green practices such as green roof planning/installation, wind turbines, and composting
  • Generating community engagement through developing online surveys about, for example, green purchasing attitudes and patterns about paper, electricity, etc.
  • Developing ideas to support individual and collective behavioral change and creating a voice to influence local policy decisions related to sustainability

Application Deadline: 1 February 2012

Internship Requirements:

The application process for this internship is competitive, as strong writing, research, time management, and deadline-meeting skills are a must. Knowledge about current environmental issues and sustainability practices (such as those covered in RU’s SUST curriculum) is important, as well. Experience analyzing data and/or developing information for websites is desirable, though not required. Current RU undergraduates may apply; preference is given to Sustainability Studies majors. Applicants should have sophomore standing, at least one SUST course with a grade of B or better, and a minimum cumulative 3.0 GPA.

Workload / Hours / Academic Requirements:

The selected intern will be supervised by Ms. Gail Merritt of the AGSL, with academic support/direction by Professor Mike Bryson in the Sustainability Studies program. The basic work requirement is a minimum of 10 hours per week for twelve weeks (120 hours total) of on-task work at the AGSL, some of which may be completed off-site (depending upon the intern’s school/work schedule). Other requirements include submitting weekly timesheets to the on-site supervisor and faculty instructor; holding 2-3 meetings with the instructor to discuss the progress of the internship; keeping an informal weekly journal of notes and reflections summarizing that week’s work; and submitting a final research paper (7-10pp) that synthesizes reflections on the internship experience within the context of a sustainability issue(s) of particular interest to the student.

This internship is unpaid but may be taken for SUST 350 course credit (Service & Sustainability, 3sh, pre-req ENG 102). SUST majors may use this class as a major requirement, relevant elective, or general elective; non-majors may use it as elective credit. The successful applicant may register for SUST 350 as a “course by arrangement” for the Spring, Summer, or Fall 2012 semesters. Regardless, the internship would begin in early February, 2012.

Application Deadline: 1 February 2012

To apply, send an email application to Professor Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu) that includes the following:

  • Your name, contact information, student ID, RU major, and previously completed SUST courses (semester and grade noted)
  • Personal statement indicating your interest in the internship experience (500 words max)
  • Work availability (days/times), assuming a ten-hour/week commitment with flexible scheduling possible
  • A writing sample of two graded RU essays, with class/instructor/date noted (attached to your email as Word or PDF documents)

For More Information

Contact Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu; 312.281.3148 office; 815.557.3153 cell) and/or check out the Alliance for a Greener South Loop website.

New Book on the Chicago River’s Reversal

The reversal of the Chicago River — one of the great engineering projects of the late 19th century — impacted both the watersheds of the Chicago Region as well as the economy of the city and its suburbs. While that transformation and its consequences have been much discussed, a new photo book significantly adds to that documentation, as discussed by a recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Beginning in 1894, photographers set out to document the mammoth project. Some of those 22,000 images are now featured in the recently released book by Richard Cahan and Michael Williams, “The Lost Panoramas; When Chicago Changed its River and the Land Beyond.” Few of the images have ever been seen before, the authors say. The negatives were recently discovered by accident in a basement of the James C. Kirie Water Reclamation Plant in Des Plaines.

“Nearly every photo is panoramic in nature — wide-angle, unobstructed views of a world that no longer exists,” the authors write.

The book, published by CityFiles Press, retails for $45. Cahan is a former Chicago Sun-Times picture editor.

Heather Diedrich Is First Sustainability Studies Graduate

After less than two years as a formal degree program, I’m pleased to announce that our first Sustainability Studies graduate walked across the stage at Roosevelt’s storied Auditorium Theater on Dec. 16th, 2011. Congratulations to my former student and advisee, Heather Diedrich!

Heather Diedrich with SUST professors Greg Buckley (left) and Mike Bryson

In November, the Chicago Tribune interviewed Heather about her choice to come here:

Heather Diedrich didn’t know what she wanted to do after high school, so she entered the workforce instead of going to college. “I didn’t want to waste time or money until I knew what I wanted to do,” she says.

But after several years of working as a server and in retail, Diedrich was ready to get serious about her education. She stumbled upon an announcement for Roosevelt University’s brand-new undergraduate sustainability studies program and was intrigued. “It was just perfect for me. The topics to be studied — food, water, social responsibility — are what I like to read about and what I care about in life.”

Heather and RU's President, Chuck Middleton

My colleagues and I are delighted that Heather made her choice and proud to see her complete the program. One thing that has really struck me as I’ve taught my first several SUST courses is the intelligence, motivation, and passion of the students who’ve enrolled as majors in Sustainability Studies. They’re among the most talented folks I’ve ever worked with.

Summer 2012 Great Lakes Research Opportunities for Undergrads at UWM

Here’s an exciting summer research opportunity for SUST majors with interests in science and water. The National Science Foundation’s Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program funds summer research programs all over the US each year, and one noteworthy prospect is the summer internship program at the Center for Great Lakes Studies at the University of Wisconsin — Milwaukee.

Research Opportunities at the Center for Great Lakes Studies (Univ Wisc - Milwaukee)

Information about the program (pdf)
Duration: 4 June through 10 August 2012
This is nice: $5,000 stipend + travel and housing support
Application deadline: 5 March 2012

For those SUST majors with some science in their background, particularly biology and/or chemistry, this is a potentially outstanding opportunity to do original research under the guidance of a professional scientist on a Great Lakes science/sustainability topic of your choice. Back in my undergrad years in the 1980s, when the REU program was new, I benefited from two summer internships — one studying avian ecology at the University of Michigan Biological Station (northern Lower Michigan), the other learning about the biogeochemistry of salt marshes and coastal marine ponds at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (Cape Cod). Both were tremendous learning experiences I’ve never forgotten.

Debut of the Water in Schaumburg Project

This past fall semester, students in my Sustainability Studies 220 Water seminar at Roosevelt University’s Schaumburg Campus collaborated on a semester-long research endeavor, the Water in Schaumburg Project. Small groups of students researched water resource issues related to water supply, wastewater treatment, wetlands, and the Salt Creek watershed — all within the context of the Village of Schaumburg and surrounding communities. They wrote essays, gathered images, and collected/annotated internet resources on their four key topics; and after synthesizing and editing their work, I uploaded it to the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future website — a collaborative endeavor that originated in the spring of 2011 with my SUST 210 Sustainable Future class.

Congratulations to the members of SUST 220 for their hard work on this project! And coming up in spring 2012 — a transportation-focused project from my online SUST 210 class.

The “Development” of Teale Woods in Joliet: A Personal Critique

Teale Woods, winter 2011 (M. Bryson)

A year and a half ago, I wrote an op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News (reprinted later on this blog) about an obscure tract of urban forest in Joliet called Teale Woods. Heretofore an overgrown and litter-strewn city woodland, the place nevertheless possessed an air of mystery and enchantment.

No doubt my fascination with this humble woodland was partly due to its namesake, Edwin Way Teale (1899-1980), a Joliet native and one of America’s foremost nature writers and photographers during the 20th century. A skilled naturalist and brilliant observer of plants, animals, and human nature alike, Teale’s eloquent descriptions of the natural world included not just remote wilderness areas, but everyday landscapes familiar to us all — backyards, farms, even urban spaces.

Edwin Way Teale
Edwin Way Teale

I like to think Teale would’ve found much here to appreciate and value. He had a knack of seeing wonderful things — whether a locally rare bird species making its spring migration, or a beautifully-patterned lichen on the rough bark of an oak tree. Such treasures abound if we take the time to notice them, even in ecologically compromised patches of urban nature.

Not long after my March 2010 article appeared, the Will County Forest Preserve District revealed a Preserve Improvement and Management Plan (pdf) to convert Teale Woods into a 15-acre recreational space, and then solicited public input on their ideas. I was one of seven people to provide written comments that summer, and I urged the WCFPD to avoid over-developing the site and keep the woodland as natural in appearance as possible, in accordance with the spirit of conservation espoused by Teale in his decades of writing about and advocating on behalf of the environment. This fall, the Forest Preserve completed $100,905.50 worth of work building a 0.3-mile paved trail and clearing a large lawn area at the trail head. It’s fair to say, then, that I have a vested interest in the results of these labors.

I should emphasize at this point that I unequivocally support the Forest Preserve’s untiring efforts in acquiring open space, providing outdoor recreation opportunities, educating citizens, and restoring native ecosystems. The WCFPD is the driving force for environmental conservation in Will County as well as a major contributor to its citizens’ quality of life. I have deep respect and sincere appreciation for the work of the Forest Preserve and the many preserve units my family and I visit and enjoy regularly.

Nevertheless, I feel that the development of Teale Woods has missed the mark.

In place of the narrow footpath that once afforded intimacy with the woods is a winding stretch of 10-foot-wide pavement that resembles a road more than a trail. Such an “improvement” feels like overkill within such a small tract of land, where scale is important and every square yard of green space counts.

Bench and path at Teale Woods (M. Bryson)

While it’s supposed to be accessible, parts of the path are so steeply sloped that it’s frankly hard to imagine a person in a non-motorized wheelchair being able to traverse it comfortably. Nor is the path well-suited for biking, for unlike many other preserve trails elsewhere in Will County the trail is extremely short (just a third of a mile) and goes literally nowhere: from the Center/Theodore intersection down to traffic-choked Route 53/Broadway, well north of the existing trail segment within Joliet’s Broadway Greenway. The contrast of this stubby and isolated trail with the continuous trail networks throughout the Rock Run and Theodore Marsh preserves on the far West Side is striking, to say the least.

Just as disappointing is the unattractive and poorly-placed bench on an incongruous concrete pad near the public access at Theodore and Center Streets. Marooned within an enlarged lawn area that was bulldozed of shrubs and small trees, this uninviting “rest stop” has a decidedly uninspiring view of a garbage can and the blacktopped path.

Bench and grassy meadow at Teale Woods, November 2011 (M. Bryson)

The cleared meadow may have been populated formerly by scrubby non-native plants of little ecological value, but I’m not sure the open space as currently conceived is much better. What’s lost now is the visual buffer the imperfect woods provided along busy Theodore Street, which also effectively shielded the preserve from nearby traffic noise. Now the clearing merely feels exposed and lonely, and of dubious value as a recreational space. For what? one is inspired to ask. Instead, I’d advocate using this area as a prairie restoration site, as has been done on many other Preserve holdings.

Teale Woods is still a valuable green space in the heart of Joliet’s urban core. But in sacrificing modest and aesthetically-sensitive design for the dubious recreational values of a road-like trail and a turfgrass field, its stewards have compromised the forest’s fundamental character.

The old path at Teale Woods, winter 2011 (M. Bryson)

I’m not exactly sure what Edwin Way Teale would think of the woods and the changes that have occurred these last few months. But I seriously doubt he’d be much impressed.

This is a revised and expanded version of my regular op-ed column that appears today as “Improvements” Strip Forest of Its Greenery (Sunday 18 December 2011) in the Joliet Herald-News. More information on the Will Country Forest Preserve District’s development plan for Teale Woods can be found here. You can view some photos of the preserve’s transformation and its finished state from this fall.

Russell Hoban (1925-2011), renowned author for young and old

One of my favorite children’s authors, Russell Hoban, died this past Tuesday at the age of 86. Hoban was a skilled and highly-praised novelist, as well; but as a father of young girls, I came to know his work through his immortal Frances the Badger series of books from the 1960s, which featured brilliant illustrations — first from Garth Williams, then from Hoban’s wife, Lillian Hoban.

The first page of "Bedtime for Frances" (1960); illustration by Garth Williams.

This appreciation published today the Lawrence Downs of the New York Times aptly describes the remarkable level of craft and insight Hoban brought to his work.

It’s hard to write a book. It’s harder to write one with living characters, clever scenes, warmth and wit. And it’s harder still when the people you’re writing for can’t read, or read only a little, when the words you choose must be simple, short and sweet. And if not always sweet, at least short.

Pictures help. They help a lot, sometimes more than they should. If pictures in a picture book are an enchanted countryside, the words are often just the tracks the story chugs along toward bedtime, more functional than lovely.

Russell Hoban, who died on Tuesday in London, age 86, was an author whose books for youngest readers contained writing as good as the drawings. He wrote grown-up books, too, which were praised for dazzling and inventive language. A Times reviewer called “Riddley Walker,” Mr. Hoban’s 1980 novel about a postnuclear dystopia, Beckettian, Boschian and Twain-like. Mr. Hoban knew what he was doing.

Which is obvious from his seven books about Frances. Frances is a badger who has a mother, father, baby sister and friends whose stories unfold in sentences that will delight you and make you laugh. Frances is witty and stubborn. She is adorable not because the author tells us she is. She just is:

“Frances did not eat her egg.
She sang a little song to it.
She sang the song very softly:
I do not like the way you slide,
I do not like your soft inside,
I do not like you lots of ways,
And I could do for many days
Without eggs.”

Children’s books, like pop songs, are simple things we’ll never run out of, partly because so many people want to write them and think they can. But simplicity is harder than it looks. So are depth and beauty. Mr. Hoban’s Frances books take us all the way to delight, using an easy-reader vocabulary.

Walking through Wetlands: Conservation and Restoration in the Upper Des Plaines River Watershed

My SUST 220 Water class at RU took its third field excursion on Saturday, Oct. 29th, to the Des Plaines River Wetland Demonstration Project (DPRWDP) located in northern Lake County near the town of Wadsworth, IL. Our group took a walking tour through part of the experimental wetlands of the site, much of which is land owned by the Lake County Forest Preserve and managed by staff from Wetlands Research, Inc. The goals of our visit were to learn about wetland ecology and restoration practices, understand the mechanics and implications of wetland mitigation, and assess the water quality of the two streams that run through the wetland complex — the Des Plaines River and Mill Creek.

Des Plaines River Wetland Demonstration Project site (M. B. Radeck)

Our tour was led by Jill Kostel, senior environmental engineer with the Wetlands Initiative, and Kathy Paap, an ecologist and former site manager here at the DPRWDP. Weather-wise, this day was a glorious late October specimen; temps were mild and the wind was low, which allowed us to conduct our water sampling in maximum comfort and enjoy the exercise afforded by an autumnal hike.

We started our three-hour tour with a brief orientation to the site by Jill and Kathy near the double-wide trailer that serves as their on-site office, then got back into a few cars for a short ride to a downstream site along the Des Plaines in one of the wetland restoration parcels that is managed within the DPRWDP.

Riffle dam at DPRWDP (M. B. Radeck)

This mitigation bank site is called Neal Marsh and covers 54 acres. Here a “riffle dam” was constructed a few years to oxygenate the water and provide enhanced hydrology for the wetlands in this area.

Next we returned to the main site’s parking area, then took a mile hike down a pathway that wound through several experimental wetlands on the northern end of the restoration site. We made a few stops along the way to discuss the impact of wildlife on the wetlands (e.g., beaver), the process by which water flow is controlled through the system, the kinds of experiments one can perform in such an “outdoor laboratory,” the threat of invasive species to wetlands (e.g., common carp), the ecological benefits of wetlands to wildlife and humans, and the process of wetland mitigation.

At the mid-point of our journey, we stopped at two nearby sites to take some water samples. The first was on Mill Creek, which enters the wetland preserve from the west and carries wastewater effluent from a sewage treatment facility as well as run-off from about a 20+ square mile area.

Mill Creek (M. B. Radeck)

Then, we walked a bit further to a bridge that arched over the confluence of Mill Creek with the Des Plaines River, which flows in from the north and receives surface run-off from a mosaic of suburban development that is buffered to some extent by the riparian zone of the Lake County Forest Preserve. There we could observe the confluence as well as take water samples directly from the Des Plaines. We worked at streamside in small groups to analyze the samples using the Hach Surface Waters chemistry lab as well as the portable Urban Waters LaMotte kit. You can view a summary of our results here: Water Quality Results for DPRWDP 29 Oct 2011 (pdf).

Images of our trip were captured by Mary Beth Radeck, a SUST major at RU and member of our 220 Water class. See this slideshow for a whole lot more.

Lynn Margulis, Influential Evolutionary Biologist, Dies at Age 73

Lynn Margulis, 1938-2011

One of the giants of 20th century microbiology and evolutionary theory, Dr. Lynn Margulis of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, died at age 73 this past Tuesday, Nov. 22nd. Margulis was a brilliant scientist and gifted writer who not only developed the important new evolutionary theory of endosymbiosis in the 1960s but also proved adept at connecting the insights of microbiology to evolution, genetics, ecology, and geology. Her work on the evolution of cells in the early earth environment was both elegant and complex, and helped revolutionize prevailing views on the mechanisms of evolutionary change. Notably, Margulis was able to communicate these ideas gracefully and forcefully to a general audience through her many books, some written in collaboration with her son, the science writer Dorion Sagan.

I heard Dr. Margulis speak two times — most recently, at the 2006 conference of Science, Literature, and the Arts in New York City, where she gave a distinguished keynote address; and before that, at Virginia Tech in the mid-1990s as a featured presenter at a biology symposium.

Graphic outline of the endosymbiotic theory of cell evolution (Univ of Utah, "Learn. Genetics."

Back then, after her stunning talk in a larger lecture hall in front of several hundred people, I mustered the courage to come up to her afterward and express my admiration for her work — especially her uncanny ability to make the science of bacterial evolution exciting, engaging, and utterly relevant to the grand history of life on earth (though I didn’t put it so grandly at the time). I remember how incredibly gracious she was in speaking with me for several minutes, despite her fame and reputation.

The world of science, and our larger culture as well, will miss such a person. Dr. Margulis’ obituary in the New York Times (from Thursday, Nov. 24th, by Bruce Weber) is reprinted below.

Lynn Margulis, a biologist whose work on the origin of cells helped transform the study of evolution, died on Tuesday at her home in Amherst, Mass. She was 73.

She died five days after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke, said Dorion Sagan, a son she had with her first husband, the cosmologist Carl Sagan.

Dr. Margulis had the title of distinguished university professor of geosciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, since 1988. She drew upon earlier, ridiculed ideas when she first promulgated her theory, in the late 1960s, that cells with nuclei, which are known as eukaryotes and include all the cells in the human body, evolved as a result of symbiotic relationships among bacteria.

The hypothesis was a direct challenge to the prevailing neo-Darwinist belief that the primary evolutionary mechanism was random mutation.

Rather, Dr. Margulis argued that a more important mechanism was symbiosis; that is, evolution is a function of organisms that are mutually beneficial growing together to become one and reproducing. The theory undermined significant precepts of the study of evolution, underscoring the idea that evolution began at the level of micro-organisms long before it would be visible at the level of species.

“She talked a lot about the importance of micro-organisms,” said her daughter, Jennifer Margulis. “She called herself a spokesperson for the microcosm.”

The manuscript in which Dr. Margulis first presented her findings was rejected by 15 journals before being published in 1967 by the Journal of Theoretical Biology. An expanded version, with additional evidence to support the theory — which was known as the serial endosymbiotic theory — became her first book, “Origin of Eukaryotic Cells.”

A revised version, “Symbiosis in Cell Evolution,” followed in 1981, and though it challenged the presumptions of many prominent scientists, it has since become accepted evolutionary doctrine.

“Evolutionists have been preoccupied with the history of animal life in the last 500 million years,” Dr. Margulis wrote in 1995. “But we now know that life itself evolved much earlier than that. The fossil record begins nearly 4,000 million years ago! Until the 1960s, scientists ignored fossil evidence for the evolution of life, because it was uninterpretable.

“I work in evolutionary biology, but with cells and micro-organisms. Richard Dawkins, John Maynard Smith, George Williams, Richard Lewontin, Niles Eldredge and Stephen Jay Gould all come out of the zoological tradition, which suggests to me that, in the words of our colleague Simon Robson, they deal with a data set some three billion years out of date.”

Lynn Petra Alexander was born on March 5, 1938, in Chicago, where she grew up in a tough neighborhood on the South Side. Her father was a lawyer and a businessman. Precocious, she graduated at 18 from the University of Chicago, where she met Dr. Sagan as they passed each other on a stairway.

She earned a master’s degree in genetics and zoology from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining the faculty at Massachusetts, she taught for 22 years at Boston University.

Dr. Margulis was also known, somewhat controversially, as a collaborator with and supporter of James E. Lovelock, whose Gaia theory states that Earth itself — its atmosphere, the geology and the organisms that inhabit it — is a self-regulating system, maintaining the conditions that allow its perpetuation. In other words, it is something of a living organism in and of itself.

Dr. Margulis’s marriage to Dr. Sagan ended in divorce, as did a marriage to Thomas N. Margulis, a chemist. Dr. Sagan died in 1996.

In addition to her daughter and her son Dorion, a science writer with whom she sometimes collaborated, she is survived by two other sons, Jeremy Sagan and Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma; three sisters, Joan Glashow, Sharon Kleitman and Diane Alexander; three half-brothers, Robert, Michael and Mark Alexander; a half-sister, Sara Alexander; and nine grandchildren.

“More than 99.99 percent of the species that have ever existed have become extinct,” Dr. Margulis and Dorion Sagan wrote in “Microcosmos,” a 1986 book that traced, in readable language, the history of evolution over four billion years, “but the planetary patina, with its army of cells, has continued for more than three billion years. And the basis of the patina, past, present and future, is the microcosm — trillions of communicating, evolving microbes.”