Bio Energy Dome

Stalking the Wild Duckweed-Success!    We have finally located some duckweed growing in its natural habitat. The location is at the Houston Audubon Societies' Boy Scout Woods Bird Sanctuary in High Island, Texas. This is a really neat bird sanctuary. It is about three quarters of a mile north of the Gulf of Mexico at an elevation of about 32 feet above sea level. High Island is a rather unusual geological formation on the upper Texas Gulf Coast. It is a salt dome where oil was found early in the Twentieth Century. The area around High Island is barely 5-8 feet above sea level and the salt dome juts up above very obviously. Sea faring mariners back in the Nineteenth Century would see the salt dome and think they had espied an island. As their ship sailed closer, they soon saw the rest of the Texas coastline and realized it was merely a hill...and named it "High Island".   To this day the locals lovingly refer to it as: The Hill.    The Houston Audubon Society maintains two bird sanctuaries in High Island. The Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary and the Boy Scout Woods Bird Sanctuary are absolutely incredible wild life refuges that attract people from all over the planet. In this video, we are featuring Purkey's Pond which is located at the entrance to the Boy Scout Woods Bird Sanctuary. Purkey's Pond is a small pond that is frequented twice a year by various songbirds as they migrate from the northern United States and Canada to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. When the songbirds migrate south in the fall of the year, they stop off in High Island to feed and build up their strength for the eight hundred mile non-stop flight across the Gulf of Mexico to the Yucatan. They usually stay for a month or so and catch the next "blue northern" across the Gulf.    In the spring; after spending a warm winter on the Yucatan Peninsula, they make the eight hundred mile non-stop flight back across the Gulf of Mexico to High Island, Texas. Their first stop is to Purkey's Pond to wash the layers of salt off that have built up on their wings during the flight. Bleachers are set up at Purkey's Pond for people to sit and set up their video cameras to capture this marvelous site. When the songbirds land at Purkey's Pond, they are generally oblivious to the people sitting in the bleachers filming them. Their main concern is to get a well deserved drink of fresh water and wash the salt off of their bodies. It is truly a magical event!    One of the reasons I think we did not locate any duckweed in the Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary is because it is on the north side of High Island and downhill from the highest point on High Island. The ponds in the Smith Oaks Bird Sanctuary were inundated by the flood waters and tidal surge of Hurricane Ike in September of 2008. Those ponds probably still have a high salinity and duckweed prefers fresh water. Purkey's Pond on the other hand is located on the highest part of High Island and was not inundated by Ike's tidal surge. The two locations are hardly a mile apart and the difference in elevation is the deciding factor.    In ideal conditions, duckweed doubles its weight every 24 hours and is rich in oil content. This makes duckweed a prime sustainable and renewable biomass fuel. A Pacific Domes Bio Energy Dome can grow enough duckweed to generate the electricity to power a small home. We also have larger units to generate electricity energy to power groups of homes and small subdivisions. The electricity generated along with the tilapia and vegetables grown in the http://www.trumananderson.com/category/bio-energy-dome-2/bio-energy-dome-bio-... amounts to a payback for the initial cost in 2-3 years. The larger units pay for themselves much sooner. Our energy future is getting greener and greener! Positively Truman

Bio Energy Dome

Stalking The Wild Duckweed    I was here in the summer of 2008 with a friend of mine who wanted to come and take photos of all the waterfowl, alligators, turtles, etc. At that time, Heron Pond had a healthy layer of duckweed on its surface. Over two and one half years later, there is no duckweed to be found on this pond. It is possible that when Hurricane Ike's flood surge inundated the pond, the salinity level is still too high for duckweed to flourish here. Duckweed seems to grow best in water that is fresh or very minor levels of salt.    Duckweed is the smallest flowering plant in the world. The tiny fronds are usually from about one sixteenth of an inch to one eighth of an inch in length. Their root systems consist of tiny hair-like roots that grow to about three quarters to an inch and a half in length. Due to their tiny size, duckweed prefers more calm and still waters. The fact that the SouthEast wind has been blowing at about twenty to twenty five knots for the past two weeks may be another contributing factor for its absence here. I will continue to search until I can find some growing in its natural habitat. One of the best species of duckweed for growing in a Bio Energy Dome is the Lemna Minor species.