NOAA on Virtual Meteora

There have been some renewed interest in the sims created by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in Second Life®, partly raised by a Linden Lab case study on the NOAA sims.

I revisited the NOAA sims recently and remain amazed as I was when I first visited in 2007 at the manner in which the sims exhibited the possibilities in which governmental agencies could expand outreach to the public - both in providing an educational resource on such vital issues as climate change and creating a sense of transparency in government.

The technology (NOAA worked with Second Life designer Aimee Weber) - even though created over two years ago now - eons in virtual time - still astounds. Among the exhibits is a three dimentional weather map of the United States one could walk onto, complete with storm clouds, rain and lightning, powered by real time data feeds. On the day I visit, I walk among storm clouds hovering along the eastern coastline.

On a separate portion of the principal sim, named Meteora, I stand on the shore as a virtual tsunami takes form and crashes toward me. Nearby, I watch a giant glacier melt in seconds and submerge the pier where I stand as the water level rises.

NOAA has also recreated its Science on a Sphere on the sim - a 3-D globe that can show the movement of ocean phenomena, wind, clouds, temperature moves, hurricanes. The virtual Science on a Sphere allows one to stand on a "holodeck" - as if one were watching from inside the sphere itself - I stand amidst a chaotic swirl of hurricanes and ocean currents.

In a helpful article on Space Today Online, NOAA describes that a goal of the virtual creation is to allow users to "learn about the cutting edge science that NOAA conducts regularly."

According to NOAA, the organization traces its roots to a Survey of the Coast established in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson and currently incorporates various historic agencies and commissions - that ranged from the Weather Bureau to the Commission of Fish and Fisheries. At Meteora in Second Life, I come to understand a little more about the range of issues NOAA is responsible for - I am a meteorologist for a day.

Meteora, I am told, stems from a Greek word that means, among other things, "things high up," "things hovering above, suspended in air". As much as the word might refer to rain and hail and hurricanes, it might also lead us to think of virtual things - of virtual worlds suspended in our mind's eye, looked upon as examples for study.

BIOME - Virtual Models and Metaphors

I visit the Biome sims in Second Life®, two sims owned by the North Michigan University. The sims, according to their creator Clowey Greenwood in her blog, are "dedicated to the study of biodiversity, classification of living things, ecology and bioenergetics."

Here, literally, is a tree of life - a gigantic tree model with rooms that showcase living things at various branches of the evolutionary tree. There is a room of plants where I sit among leaning blue wisteria and crepe myrtle, a room with red spotted fungi on another branch, and yet on another level a room with animals. I study a classification chart of animals located on the wall in the animals room, notice how the subclass of monotremes branches off from mammals - while I sit next to one of two known monotremes - a duckbill platypus.

To the northeast of the Tree of Life is a giant model of a microscope, with lenses that look down on a drop of pond water. I walk into the human-size droplet of pond water - greet larger-than-life models of arcella, amoeba, parameciom, spirogyra and euglena. There is also on the grounds of the main Biome sim, among other builds, a giant pop bottle exhibiting a "closed system habitat." And on the second of the Biome sims, I wander among trees and wetlands, intended I am told, to exhibit the ecosystems of the Michigan Great Lakes region - and their changes through the seasons.

Among those interested in science and the philosophy of science, there has been much interest in the use of models and metaphors in science. At one level, the investigation seems to explore the utility of models - how they allow us to learn, remember, analyze and predict. On other levels, some of the interest is in fundamental questions of how we come to know what we know, human perception and persuasion.

More obvious than other "builds" I have visited in Second Life, the Biome sims, with the Tree of Life and giant microscope, exhibit models and metaphors in science. By their very use of models, they also provide a discourse on the use of such models and metaphors. Perhaps this is not surprising in a virtual world, where everything is indeed replica, model, metaphor.

The focus on this higher level of discourse may have some uses - while models and metaphors may allow us to learn and extend our knowledge of the natural world - they may also cloud our ability to perceive alternate views of the same world. Understanding that we are indeed seeing the world through models and metaphors and their potential limits may allow us wider capacity for alternate perspectives.

This is what I think about as I stand within the droplet of water with the paramecium and spirogyra within the lenses of the giant thirty-meter tall microscope at Biome - the curious manner in which we might learn about looking at how we look at things - from other eyes, other lenses.

Galapagos Islands: Learning in a Virtual World

"Nothing could be less inviting than the first appearance," Charles Darwin writes of his encounter with the terrain of the Galapagos Islands in 1835, "A broken field of black basaltic lava, thrown into the most rugged waves, and crossed by great fissures, is everywhere covered by stunted, sunburnt brushwood, which shows little signs of life."

At the University of Cincinnati's recreation of the Galapagos Islands in the virtual world of Second Life®, a 3-D model of the islands, stark and dry, rising steep out of a blue sea, provides a window into the peculiar geography that Darwin observed in his momentous encounter. The virtual islands, I am told, were built using digital elevation maps to recreate the unique geography and terrain.

I am mesmerized by the terrain as I fly around the virtual Galapagos and take views from San Cristobal and then at Isabela. I move my computer's virtual camera to varying angles and distances - see the islands from the sky as birds might. It is a remarkable way to learn.

This peculiar geography of the islands was, of course, central to Darwin's thinking that each species did not descend from its own separately created ancestor but may have "evolved" from others. These islands, born of volcanic fire and isolated some 600 miles off the western coast of the South American mainland, provided a landscape with an "original paucity" of life on which "colonists" - whether plant or bird or reptile - might evolve into new forms adapted to open niches in the biological economy of the islands. They must have seemed natural laboratories to Darwin's observant eye.

"[O]ne might really fancy," Darwin muses in regards to the birds of the Galapagos, "that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends."

The Galapagos Project in Second Life is part of the University of Cincinnati's broader celebration of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Fleep Tuque, who manages the Second Life projects for the university, tells me one day. As I visit the Galapagos build, I am struck by the innovative ways in which educators have begun to make use of virtual worlds.

Beyond the 3-D model of the islands, the sims of the Galapagos Project host the Darwin Celebration Theatre at which individuals from around the world (in the form of avatars) could participate in live events and symposia streamed into Second Life. There are models also of wildlife of the islands - iguanas, lizards, the finches and tortoises. A replica of the Beagle extends an automated tour of the islands - providing textual notes of Darwin's visit in 1835. According to an article in Educause Review by Chris Collins and Ronald Millard of University of Cincinnati, the islands would also serve as a repositary where photographs, videos and materials collected by students on trips to study Darwin's works might be shared with the broader public.

The virtual experience of the Galapagos is not the same as a real life visit to the islands - but if it is something less, it is also something more. The possibility of shared, communal learning in the virtual world with colleagues and strangers from across continents and time zones intriques me. More, in this world where pigs might literally fly and night becomes day by the click of a menu button, there is also the wonderful sense of whimsy - the measured pace of Lionel the goat wandering by water, a ride on a giant tortoise that can fly, the random swishes of an animated lizard's tail.

Leatherback Turtles at Las Baulas National Park

At Las Baulas sim (think of it as a region) in Second Life®, leatherback turtles make their slow nesting crawl to shore. Some, half submerged, appear like sentient rocks rising out of the sea.

I think of them as emissaries of a deep, wild place I do not know, speaking a language of a time beyond our conception.

Las Baulas is one of the Costa Rica Sims. Giancarlo Takacs, owner and CEO of the sims, greets me as I admire the leatherback builds, contrasted against sandy white sand, the blue of sky and sea and the white sea spray. "Your place is absolutely beautiful," I say.

Takacs says that Las Baulas National Park is one of the most important nesting sites of the leatherbacks - located in his country of Costa Rica. His sims contain several replicas of national parks in Costa Rica. He is very involved in protecting species that are in danger, he says.

In real life, the leatherback turtles or las baulas in Spanish (Dermochelys corlacea), named for their rubbery-skinned shell, are considered the most pelagic and largest of sea turtles. They are generally from 4 to 6 feet and can weigh over a thousand pounds.

Their flippers have no claws and yet the female leatherbacks will crawl to shore, timed with the tides, often to the same beach where they were born, to deposit eggs into soft sand.

Listed as an endangered species in the U.S., the leatherback populations have suffered due to past human poaching of turtle eggs and incidental entanglement in commercial fish nets and lines. Some also die from consuming plastic bags floating in sea water mistaken for their principal food source - jellyfish. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, populations of nesting female leatherbacks have declined from over 100,000 in 1980 to some 26,000 to 43,000 worldwide in recent years.

Las Baulas National Park in Costa Rica is now a protected nesting place for these turtles. In Las Baulas sim, I have an inkling of the marvel of these creatures and a sense of their plight. Perhaps this is one use of virtual space: a global platform to acquaint others with the plight of species. I am also thinking about Las Baulas and the Costa Rica sims, the mix of residential estates (for which the sim owner charges rent) and the nature spaces - commerce and nature in a more or less symbiotic relationship. There is a story there as well.

But what strikes me most is the sense of wonder - of these creatures emerging out of the deep, wild sea. It makes me think of tall ships that come on occasion into Boston harbor, behind great winds upon white sails. Emissaries of a trans-Atlantic sailing regatta, the ships - brigs, barques and schooners among them - bring in a mix of smells that tell of distant ports, a relentless sea, the strength of wind and the endurance of wood and sail.

They make us wonder, beckon us to distant shores.

Digital Wilderness

"Even in New York City," the naturalist Loren Eiseley once wrote, "there are patches of wilderness ...." I wonder sometimes whether in the landscape of our digital life - amidst websites and blogs, emails and instant messages, in the internet swirl of pixels, words and hypertext - there might also be wild spaces.

A few years ago, I came across a digital landscape - the Second Life® virtual world - where "residents" can build homes, make anything from chairs to trees to chipmunks, terra-form the land, create waves and weather systems, chat with strangers, friends and neighbors and live virtual second lives. In the midst of this diverse, sometimes chaotic and ever burgeoning world, I was struck at the number of raw terrain and "builds" that were naturescapes - gardens, parks, nature reserves, river lands, natural beaches and blue ocean.

The number of nature "builds" and wildlife (especially marine life) it seems have grown exponentially since then. I have felt an inexplicable urge to visit or revisit these virtual spaces and provide a few sketches for those who might find them of interest.

What is the meaning of nature in a virtual world? Why do we create forests filled with bird song and beaches with the spray of crashing waves in a world that consists of pixels and bytes?

The patches of wilderness of which Eiseley spoke were spaces and moments that might give rise to revelations, where "the mundane world gives way to quite another dimension." Perhaps that is also something we seek.