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Thinking of a Summer Driving Vacation? The EIA Explains What’s Up — and Down — With Gasoline Prices

New Mexico 124 / historic US 66 in Cibla County west of I-40 exit 104. Mount Taylor in background. Marcin Wichary, Wikimedia Commons

Editor’s Note: When researching sources for this article about what to expect from the ebb and flow of gasoline prices in the future, we came across a source we hadn’t used before in relation to prices the public could refer to in their own travel and commuting budgeting; the EIA was a perfect fit.

EIA analysis (US Energy Information Administration — independent statistics and analysis) of the petroleum market points to fluctuations in the price of crude oil as the main contributor to the large changes in gasoline prices the United States has experienced in recent years. Crude oil prices are greatly affected by levels of supply relative to actual and expected demand for the petroleum products made from crude oil.

Crude oil is a global commodity where oil prices are determined on the world market. Strong global demand growth for petroleum in the mid-2000s was a major factor in record high prices for crude oil and gasoline in mid-2008. Supply disruptions led to spikes in crude oil and gasoline prices. Major disruptions were caused by hurricanes and storms in supply regions, such as the Gulf of Mexico, political events in major oil producing countries, especially in the Middle East, and unplanned outages in US refineries and pipelines.

Gasoline is often more expensive in the summer because more costly summer blends are supplied and demand is generally higher. US refineries often conduct planned maintenance in the spring, which can lead to a drop in gasoline production and thereby make supplies more vulnerable if unplanned refinery outages occur. Supply disruptions as a result of unplanned refinery outages often result in increasing prices.

The US economic recession and a rise in the use of more fuel efficient vehicles, which contributed to lower demand for gasoline, and increases in US oil production helped to reduce upward pressure on oil and gasoline prices in the past several years.

Gasoline and oil prices are often topics in EIA’s This Week In Petroleum and in Today in Energy. For EIA’s latest gasoline price projections, see EIA’s Short-Term Energy Outlook and the Market Prices and Uncertainty Report.

Learn more:

What drives crude oil prices?
Factors Affecting Gasoline Prices
Weekly Retail Gasoline Prices
The Availability and Price of Petroleum and Petroleum Products Produced in Countries Other Than Iran

Editor’s Updating: Annual Energy Outlook 2015 — With Projections Until 2040
Annual Energy Outlook 2015 released in March 2015

November 29, 2014
The Late P.D. James, Writing Within the Conventions of a Classical Detective story and Regarded as a Serious Novelist
“For me the library is at the heart of any institution of learning, and particularly a university. Here we have assembled the wisdom of the past, the achievements of the present and our aspirations for the future.” Dame P.D. James, at the inauguration of extension to Portsmouth University library, England, 2007

Frequently Asked Questions for P.D. James from the Random House publishing site

1. How did you begin writing?

I knew from very early childhood that I wanted to be a novelist but for a number of reasons I did not begin writing my first novel, Cover Her Face, until I was in my late thirties. It was accepted by the first publisher to whom it was sent and was published in 1962.

2. Why did you choose crime?

I began with a detective story because:
- I very much enjoyed reading them in my adolescence
- I thought that I might be able to write one successfully in which case, as a popular genre, it would stand a good chance of acceptance by a publisher
- I am fascinated by construction in a novel and the detective story has to be well-constructed
- I did not wish to use the more traumatic events of my own life in an autobiographical first novel and saw the writing of a detective story as a valuable apprenticeship.
After I had progressed in my craft I came to believe that it is possible to write within the conventions of a classical detective story and still be regarded as a serious novelist and say something true about men and women and the society in which they live.

3. What is the difference between the detective story and the crime novel?

I see the detective story as a subspecies of the crime novel. The crime novel can include a remarkable variety of works from the cosy certainties of Agatha Christie, through Anthony Trollope and Graham Greene, to the great Russians. The detective story may be considered more limited in scope and potential. The reader can expect to find a central mysterious death, a closed circle of suspects each with credible motive, means and opportunity for the crime, a detective, either amateur or professional, who comes in like an avenging deity to solve it, and a solution at the end of the book which the reader should be able to arrive at by logical deduction from clues presented by the writer with deceptive cunning but essential fairness. What interests me is the extraordinary variety of talents which this so-called formula is able to accommodate.

4. How do you get your first idea?

Usually my creative imagination is sparked off by the setting rather than by the method of murder or by any of the characters. I have a strong reaction to place and may visit a lonely stretch of coast, a sinister old house or a community of people and feel strongly that I wish to set a novel there. For example, The Black Tower began with a visit to the Purbeck coast of Dorset and A Taste for Death

5. What other writers have influenced you?

I can detect in my work the influence of four very different writers: Jane Austen, Dorothy L. Sayers, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh.
November 27, 2014
When Norms Clash With Formal Laws: How Does a Society Encourage More Whistleblowing?

By Clifton B. Parker

Social norms, those unwritten rules of acceptable behavior, can change over time, such as Americans’ attitudes toward gay marriage and marijuana legalization.

But sometimes the norms clash with formal laws, and the result is counterproductive for everyone involved, say economists Matthew O. Jackson of Stanford and Daron Acemoglu of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. History illuminates how norms and laws may differ, they noted.

Jose de Riberta’s “Duelo de Mujeres,” depicting a duel between two women in 16th-century Naples. (Credit: Instituto Cervantes)

Dueling, for example, was outlawed in France in 1626, yet the practice continued long afterward. In fact, even though the government tried to vigorously enforce the ban, duels took place at high rates — estimates suggest that more than 10,000 duels resulting in more than 4,000 deaths took place in the last 30 years of King Louis XIV’s reign, which ended in 1715.

Jackson, the William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, says the laws against dueling were ineffective because they went against a deep-rooted norm, which also discouraged others from intervening to stop the bloodletting.

While laws that conflict with norms are likely to go unenforced, laws that influence behavior can change norms over time, he said. The gradual banning of smoking in public places in the United States is an example — diners now expect a smoke-free experience.

Tax evasion is another example — 30 percent of taxes were evaded in Greece in 2011, compared to only 7 percent in the United Kingdom. Tax evasion may be perceived as normal in Greece, whereas in the U.K., it is not.

Norms play a role in business affairs, too. Consider a business coordinating with other companies as part of a supply chain to bring products to market. If the government levies a value-added tax those business must pay along the way, it would be a mismatch of norms to have one business paying the tax while competing with a dishonest company that illegally evades it.

As a result, law-breaking companies will more often engage in illegal activities when they are matched with other law-breakers — and they will do so at high rates, Jackson and Acemoglu wrote in a recent research paper.

But whistleblowing can help. “Private whistleblowing can be central to the enforcement of laws. This implies that a society in which laws conflict with social norms will be unable to leverage private enforcement and will have less effective laws,” the researchers wrote.

As in the case of dueling, laws in strong conflict with existing norms tend to backfire, Jackson said. “The abrupt tightening of laws causes significant lawlessness.”

How does a society encourage more whistleblowing? “It is very hard to de-stigmatize whistleblowing, as it often means reporting on a community of which someone is a member,” Jackson said.

“Encouraging whistleblowing can thus involve shifting a person’s perceived allegiance from the narrow community in which some people might be breaking laws in ways that are harmful, to the broader community who are harmed by the actions,” he said.

A law cannot be understood in isolation from the many other laws that affect the same population, Jackson said.

“For example, tough immigration laws can make many companies who may hire immigrants into ‘outlaws,’ which then affects their attitudes toward abiding by other laws or regulations, for instance, on worker safety,” he said.

As such, the research offers a different perspective than the “broken windows theory” of law enforcement that was introduced in the 1980s. That view claimed that the high incidence of serious crimes in inner cities was a result of permissive attitudes toward smaller crimes like graffiti, vandalism and subway fare evasion. As a result, New York City adopted a tougher policing strategy in the ensuing decades.

But, Jackson said, “Badly designed — excessively tight — laws for one type of behavior — small-scale drug crime in inner cities – can make laws against other types of behavior completely ineffective.” The problem is that those overly strict laws make “criminals” of too many people, thus discouraging citizens from becoming whistleblowers willing to call police.

A more effective strategy would be to “decriminalize some behaviors that have small externalities or costs to society,” he said.

Jackson said that norms are often so ingrained that people do not even notice the extent to which they shape behavior: “They make our behaviors seem natural.”

Norms become self-reinforcing, since it is much easier to live in a society where people’s behaviors are predictable and people understand what is expected of them, he said.

The downside is that such conformity can make even very bad norms difficult to change, Jackson said.

He suggests two possible ways to successfully change norms: dramatic and highly visible efforts to change behaviors spearheaded by leaders like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, or gradual changes in laws over long periods of time, such as smoking regulations in America.

November 25, 2014
2014: Books for Children and Young Adult Readers Certain to Make Good Holiday Presents

By Jill Norgren

Once again I turned young readers for holiday book suggestions. I asked the same questions as in past years — “which books do you love” and “which books did you read this past year that you think other readers and listeners would appreciate?”

Many favorites are new but some are classics. This year a number of books have social issue and political themes.

2010 National Book Festival poster illustrator, Peter Ferguson, has created a visual puzzle of literary characters eagerly listening to a book being read aloud. Library of Congress

FOR YOUNG LISTENERS AND EARLY READERS

Click Clack Moo: Cows That Type is irresistible. A young friend in Washington, DC introduced me to this story of cows who learn to type and lead Farmer Brown’s barn animals on a strike for better living and work conditions. Author Doreen Cronin has created a bit of thought-provoking silliness that will tickle the rebel in children 3 — 6.

In New York City three year-old Garrett suggests James Dean’s Pete the Cat: I Love My White Shoes which teaches about colors. Companion book Pete the Cat and His Four Groovy Buttons leads 2 — 4 year olds through their numbers. Pete the Cat is an appealing, resilient character with a nice Zen message about lost things.

Anne Dewdney’s Llama Llama Red Pajama also made Garrett’s list. He has asked for this story of bedtime since he was a toddler. Garrett is a bit of a foodie and also asks for Adam Rubin’s Secret Pizza Party, a book with terrific illustrations. Judy Schachner’s 2005 Skippyjohn Jones pleases him with its playful, imaginative kitten. Schachner uses simple rhyme and Spanish expressions to give the story lots of pizzazz. Another title on Garrett’s list is the 1973 classic, Swimmy, by Leo Lionni. Illustrated with beautiful wash images, Lionni reflects on the power of an individual and the even greater power of teamwork.

For children from under one to three, I turned to the favorites of Garrett’s little sister, Margaux. She loves lift-the-flap books. These include anything by Karen Katz including Where Is Baby’s Belly Button. Katz’s book pairs well with Sandra Boynton’s Belly Button Book as each permits the exploration of a youngster’s body. Eric Hill’s Where’s Spot, about animals and objects, makes her list as does the 1998 classic Baby Faces which presents a bucketful of facial expressions including happy, sad, and puzzled. It is a great book to look at while trying to replicate what is on the page. And what would a kid-list be without a toilet book? Margaux has latched on to Garrett’s old P is for Potty, a First Look and Find Elmo book.
Shop Amazon Books – Gifts for Young Readers

November 21, 2014
A Scientific Mystery: A Region of the Brain Identified, Fought Over and Rediscovered

By Amy Adams

What started a few years ago as a brain-imaging study turned into a scientific mystery that eventually ended in the basement of Stanford’s Lane Medical Library, within the pages of a book first published in 1881 and last checked out in 1912.

That journey, published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, revealed the long and contentious history of an otherwise innocuous tract of nerve fibers of the visual system, running from just below to just above the ear. It also revealed the many ways scientific knowledge has been gained and lost over the centuries, and in some cases written out of history through a combination of scientific in-fighting and, at times, poor record-keeping.

The original reference to the vertical occipital fasciculus was published by Carl Wernicke in 1881. The dashed blue lines outline where Wernicke located the region. Jason Yeatman and Kevin Weiner found the illustration in Lane Medical Library. (Courtesy of PNAS)

The journey began when then-graduate student Jason Yeatman, co-first author of the recent paper, was carrying out brain-imaging studies to better understand how kids learn to read, in the lab of Brian Wandell, a professor of psychology. Yeatman noticed that all the brain images in his study contained a structure that didn’t appear in any texts.

Either he’d discovered a new brain pathway or someone else had discovered it first, but the discovery and researcher had been lost to history.

Kevin Weiner, a postdoctoral scholar and co-first author on the paper, had been working with Yeatman on the imaging studies. Weiner, who is in the lab of Kalanit Grill-Spector, associate professor of psychology, said that he had long been interested in science history, and this mystery piqued his interest.

“Jason and I decided for our own curiosity to understand what happened to this pathway,” said Weiner, who is also director of public communication at the nonprofit Institute for Applied Neuroscience.

A few factors could be the cause of brain structures being discovered and forgotten. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Weiner had learned, the roughly 30,000 names of brain structures in various languages were consolidated into a list of 4,500 as part of an effort to create a universal nomenclature. “In trying to make it easier to remember names, some got written out of history,” Weiner said.

In this case, consolidation wasn’t the reason for the region’s disappearance from the literature. The region was the source of controversy between its discoverer, Carl Wernicke, and his adviser, the influential neuroanatomist Theodor Meynert.

November 20, 2014
Does the Stress of Cooking Family and Holiday Meals Outweigh the Benefits?

Editor’s Note: Every year I would come home late on a Wednesday from Time magazine in New York City, only to start cooking a Thanksgiving meal at our house the next day. On Friday, I went back to work, to return home very late as the magazine was going to press. But there were times I’d have Saturday duty at Time and only see my college-attending daughters for a few hours on Sunday before they returned to school at Simmons and Bryn Mawr by AmTrak. Nonetheless, for much of the last 50 years, I have cooked almost all of the holiday and every-night meals. I cannot imagine how women, particularly those who have no spouse, hold two jobs and have children, cope with cooking meals on a daily basis.

Freedom From Want, by Norman Rockwell. To the late art critic, Robert Hughes, the painting represents the theme of family continuity, virtue, homeliness, and abundance without extravagance in a Puritan tone, as confirmed by the modest beverage choice of water. The Rockwell cook presented the turkey. © Norman Rockwell Museum, Wikimedia Commons

Magazines, television and other popular media increasingly urge families to return to the kitchen, stressing the importance of home-cooked meals and family dinners to physical health and family well-being. But new research findings from North Carolina State University show that home cooking and family meals place significant stresses on many families — and are simply impossible for others.

“We wanted to understand the relationship between this ideal that is presented in popular culture and the realities that people live with when it comes to feeding their children,” says Dr. Sarah Bowen, an associate professor of sociology at NC State and co-author of a paper on the ongoing study.

The researchers interviewed 150 female caregivers in families with children between the ages of 2 and 8, as well as conducting in-depth observations of 12 of these families for a total of 250 hours.

“We found that middle-class, working-class, and poor families faced some similar challenges,” says Dr. Sinikka Elliott, an associate professor of sociology at NC State who co-authored the paper. “For example, mothers from all backgrounds reported difficulty in finding time to prepare meals that everyone in the family would be willing to eat.”

In addition, middle-class mothers reported being torn between their desire to spend quality time with their children and the expectation that they needed to provide the children with a home-cooked meal.

But, while all families reported financial considerations as a factor in meal planning, finances affected family decisions in very different ways.

For example, middle-class mothers were concerned that they weren’t able to give their kids the best possible meals because they couldn’t afford to buy all organic foods.

Poor families, meanwhile, faced more severe restrictions. Their financial limitations made it more difficult for them to afford fresh produce, find transportation to grocery stories, or have access to the kitchen tools needed to prepare meals — such as sharp knives, stoves, or pots and pans.

“Poor mothers also skipped meals and stood in long lines at non-profit food pantries to provide food for their children,” Bowen says.

“This idea of a home-cooked meal is appealing, but it’s unrealistic for a lot of families,” Bowen adds. “We as a society need to develop creative solutions to support families and help share the work of providing kids with healthy meals.”

“There are a lot of ways we could do this, from community kitchens where families work together to arranging to-go meals from schools,” Elliott says. “There is no one answer. But we hope this work inspires people to start thinking outside the family kitchen about broader things we as a society can do when it comes to food and health.”

The paper, The Joy of Cooking?, is published online in Contexts (needs a subscription or a fee). The paper was co-authored by Dr. Joslyn Brenton, an assistant professor of sociology at Ithaca College and former Ph.D. student at NC State. This project was supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant number 2011-68001-30103 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

November 20, 2014
Confessions of a Would-Be Author and Halfhearted Housewife

A Clean House Retro Wall Sticker by Abode Wallart

By Joan L. Cannon

How to order the day has long been a puzzle to me. Probably it is for many an artist (or a wannabe) who has the responsibility of the home even of a single body. It’s been a long time since I began worrying this problem and it sticks to me like a burr to this day, decades after I first noticed it.

I’m what people like to call a morning person. By the end of an afternoon, I’m generally out of steam, so to speak, and unlikely to have energy for any kind of self generated activity either mental or physical. When I was middle-aged, if I had to, I could call up reserves. There was no other way I could have been teaching. I recall thinking in those years that I’ve give a good part of my life if only someone would prepare a meal for us. I’d have given that myself, it was not near the end of my day that had begun before six a.m.

Nowadays, alone except for my dog and cat, I still try to decide whether to let the bed lie unmade, the dishes sit in the sink, and put off the marketing so as to get to the blank page, or to the ones needing all sorts of editing, cutting, tweaking or rewriting … etc.

Habit has a grip on everybody, and I find that the years of making sure we would all have a hospitable home to come back to at day’s end has made it all but impossible for me to settle to anything before the basic household chores have been done. On days when I wonder what I’m doing, (thinking I might have something to say that’s worth writing down) it still comes into my head that maybe I haven’t got priorities properly sequenced even now.

Of course, part of that comes from being of a generation that was ashamed to have anyone drop in unexpectedly and find chaos instead of reasonable order in our house. I’ve never been a neatnik, but I do try to keep the throw pillows off the floor, and in smoking days (long past now), ashtrays emptied. I compulsively stack the unread New Yorkers and catalogs I intend to examine later instead of leaving them in a sliding shuffle on the coffee table. The problem is that however short my list of must-dos at the beginning of the day, I can’t wait to get to the computer.

Well, now the bigger problem seems to be how to deal with the time after the dog is fed. We’ve worked out a kind of deal that if he keeps pestering me to be fed in the afternoon, he won’t get dinner until five. This saves me from the worst annoyances till about four-thirty. Whenever I give in, though, begins the problem time for me. It seems that the workday is over once I get to the kitchen in fading daylight.

The trouble is that it’s too early to think about my own dinner. If I plan to cook something that will take time, that’s okay, but mostly I don’t. Mostly I will reheat leftovers or simply put a chicken thigh in the oven to roast. A mere half hour or so is all that’s needed to prepare even a decently balanced meal for one. Even if I’m hungry by six, the evening stretches too darn far. There’s no point in going to bed (even to read) before ten or so because I have enough trouble falling asleep even if I’m physically tired.

If I go back to my computer to try to make some progress on whatever I’m laboring over, I’m not fresh enough even to proofread.

Our children gave me a device so I can watch Netflix. Given the sad state of TV offerings where I live, that has been a real savior for me. I watched a 1940s movie last night and reinforced my conviction that movies are better now than they used to be. I watched NOVA and was enthralled. I watched a silly cozy BBC mystery and was captivated again by the wonders of English horticulture.

What I didn’t do was to vacuum the carpet. I didn’t polish the brass (that really needs it because Thanksgiving will be celebrated here next week.) Ditto the silver in the china cabinet. I did the laundry, and then I even folded it and put it away, but dusting has almost disappeared from my vocabulary as well as my chore list. So now I try to feel better for bothering to mention all these things on paper.

Somehow I get the feeling that my sins are growing more and more obvious, rather like the picture of Dorian Gray. How long can I get away with all this?

©2014 Joan L. Cannon for SeniorWomen.com

November 18, 2014
Gender Gaps in Test Scores and Grades: Women Fare as Well or Better Than Male Counterparts In Smaller Classes

By Clifton B. Parker

Stanford Law School Professor Mark Kelman is co-author, with colleague Daniel Ho, of an article on how to decrease the gender gap in professional school settings.

Rhoades Residential Hall, Bryn Mawr College, Pennsylvania

Reducing class sizes and reforming grading systems may help reduce the gender gap in professional school settings, according to a new Stanford study.

“Our findings suggest that class size and pedagogical policy have a considerable role to play in addressing gender gaps in professional school,” wrote Stanford law Professors Daniel Ho and Mark Kelman in a research article in the Journal of Legal Studies.

Pedagogy is the art or science of teaching and educational methods. In their study, the Stanford law professors examined the grades of Stanford law students in small or large classes from 2001 to 2012. The research capitalized on the fact that students were assigned to one first-year course in a small section, they wrote.

As Kelman, also the vice dean at Stanford Law School, said, “Randomization and mandatory classes mean that we can cleanly study the effects of class size, as self-selection is not an issue.”

The data consisted of 15,689 grades assigned by 91 instructors to 1,897 students in that time period. In 2008, the law school notably changed the grading system and reduced some class sizes.

As Kelman and Ho pointed out, gender gaps in test scores and grades have been documented across a range of educational settings — in science, collegiate outcomes, and law and business schools. Research shows that Socratic and adversarial teaching styles — common to traditional law school instruction — may pose disadvantages for female students, who tend to participate less frequently than males in larger classes. Studies also have found that women fare as well or better than male counterparts when class sizes are smaller.

When the researchers analyzed student grades in the 2001-08 period, a clear gender gap existed for female students in large classes. On average, women earned grades that were .05 GPA points lower than those for men.

Though such a gender gap is relatively small, the professors wrote, it is significant when it comes to career opportunities in a field like law. Grades and clerkship placements are highly correlated — an increase in GPA from 3.6 to 3.65 is associated with a 7 percent increase in the probability of securing a federal appellate clerkship, they noted.

November 17, 2014
Calm The Dog! Lightning Expected to Increase by 50 Percent With Global Warming

Lightning strikes across the United States in August and September of 2011. Data from the National Lightning Detection Network, UAlbany; animation by David Romps, UC Berkeley, and Phil Ebiner, UC Berkeley Public Affairs.

Today’s climate models predict a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes across the United States during this century as a result of warming temperatures associated with climate change.

Reporting in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Science, UC Berkeley climate scientist David Romps and his colleagues look at predictions of precipitation and cloud buoyancy in 11 different climate models and conclude that their combined effect will generate more frequent electrical discharges to the ground.

“With warming, thunderstorms become more explosive,” said Romps, an assistant professor of earth and planetary science and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. “This has to do with water vapor, which is the fuel for explosive deep convection in the atmosphere. Warming causes there to be more water vapor in the atmosphere, and if you have more fuel lying around, when you get ignition, it can go big time.”

More lightning strikes mean more human injuries; estimates of people struck each year range from the hundreds to nearly a thousand, with scores of deaths. But another significant impact of increased lightning strikes would be more wildfires, since half of all fires — and often the hardest to fight — are ignited by lightning, Romps said. More lightning also would likely generate more nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, which exert a strong control on atmospheric chemistry.

While some studies have shown changes in lightning associated with seasonal or year-to-year variations in temperature, there have been no reliable analyses to indicate what the future may hold. Romps and graduate student Jacob Seeley hypothesized that two atmospheric properties — precipitation and cloud buoyancy — together might be a predictor of lightning, and looked at observations during 2011 to see if there was a correlation.

“Lightning is caused by charge separation within clouds, and to maximize charge separation, you have to loft more water vapor and heavy ice particles into the atmosphere,” he said. “We already know that the faster the updrafts, the more lightning, and the more precipitation, the more lightning.”

Precipitation — the total amount of water hitting the ground in the form of rain, snow, hail or other forms — is basically a measure of how convective the atmosphere is, he said, and convection generates lightning. The ascent speeds of those convective clouds are determined by a factor called CAPE — convective available potential energy — which is measured by balloon-borne instruments, called radiosondes, released around the United States twice a day.

November 13, 2014
For the Maker Culture, Aquascapes: The Art of Underwater Gardening

Photo courtesy of Aqua Forest Aquarium

Dive into the dazzling world of aquatic plants in a new exhibition of tropical underwater gardens at the Conservatory of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Visitors go ‘below the surface’ as they stroll past lush, living aquascapes, imaginatively crafted to highlight the diversity of freshwater tropical waterways.

Aquascaping, the art of creating stunning underwater landscapes with plants, stones and wood, is a popular international gardening trend. Annual competitions attract hundreds of elaborate entries from around the world. The beautifully planted aquariums can mimic everything from primeval forests to verdant valleys or can become sublime works of underwater abstract art.

Aquascapes: The Art of Underwater Gardening features a dozen tanks ranging from 4 to 6 feet long, set into the walls of a partially enclosed cavern-like setting that gives visitors the feeling of being down in a cenote. Nine of the tanks (three each) take their inspiration from Africa, Asia and South America, making use of native plants, rock, hardwood and fish to evoke the natural landscape of these tropical places. Three additional tanks are being created by local aquarium experts from San Francisco’s Ocean Treasures and will highlight the more abstract artistic possibilities of aquascape design.

“Aquascaping is enormously popular around the world, particularly in crowded cities and colder countries where outdoor gardening isn’t possible, but it isn’t so familiar to American audiences,” says Lau Hodges, Conservatory Curator. “I’m hoping we can change that with this exhibit because aquascaping offers urban audiences an exciting new possibility for apartment gardening — one that really allows the inner science geek and inner artist to express themselves. It’s gardening for the maker culture, really.”

Aquascaping, with its focus on aquatic plants and their artful arrangement, began in earnest in the 1930s in the Netherlands. Freshwater aquarium equipment became commercially available, and Dutch aquarists began to experiment with arranging various types of plants with diverse leaf color, size and texture in terraced heights, much like a terrestrial flower garden.

These wonderfully crowded underwater gardens left little room for decorative rock or driftwood. In the 1990’s however, Japanese aquarist and photographer Takashi Amano introduced the world to his ‘nature aquarium’ style. Amano masterfully made use of the Zen aesthetic practice of rock and plant arrangement to create minimal, but stunning works of living art. Using just a few species of plants and carefully selected stones or driftwood, Amano’s aquascapes evoked serene landscapes in miniature — mountain ranges, peaceful grass fields and quiet forests. Schools of fish, usually limited to just one or two species, appeared to fly like flocks of birds through these panoramic vistas. Amano’s three-volume series, Nature Aquarium World, featuring breathtaking photographs of his aquascape designs, sparked a wave of interest in aquarium gardening.

Nyphema, common name: water lily. Tank 12

November 13, 2014