Daniel M. Russell's Blog, page 6

Answer: Earliest photograph from Cozumel, Mexico?

 I know, I know... 

Lionfish at 20m (60 feet) on the reef in Cozumel, Mexico 

This is the Nth time we've looked for the "first photo of X"--but I noticed something very different in this Challenge. As we've noticed before, even very simple questions sometimes bring up unexpected surprises and issues.  That's the case with this week's very simple question. 

I started searching for the earliest photos I could find taken in Cozumel.  Easy, right?  Turns out there are interesting issues here.  See if you can spot the biggest issue and work around it! 

This week's SearchResearch Challenge isn't hard, but I think it's an important one that speaks to the future of doing online research.  Let's figure it out together.  

1. What is the earliest / oldest photograph you can find that was taken on Cozumel?

If you do the obvious query, this is what you'll see on Google: 

That's pretty disappointing. It's a really interesting idea, but I am very skeptical of the claim that these Mayan "images" are from projections of sunlight onto the limestone walls in Cozumel.  To quote from the summary: 

"The discovery suggests that the Mayans were able to project images and record them on stone tablets."

What?  Really?  That's a wild claim.  So I thought I'd try Bing search--only to find this: 

What is going on here?  Did the Mayans really invent a precursor to photography 1000 years ago?  

A little bit of digging into the links below each of these results reveals that the SOURCE of these remarkable claims is this page from "This is Cozumel" tourist web site. 

Check out the date: It's April 1, 2014.  The whole article is an April Fool's joke. 

As we know, search engines and LLMs are notoriously bad at humor and satire.  (See this article "How satire crippled Google's most powerful AI.")  And this is a great example of the LLMs not understanding humor, but presenting it as fact.  Both Google and Bing got it terribly wrong.  

I then tried Gemini, and got a better answer: 

This is actually pretty interesting.  For fun, I also tried this query on Claude: 

(I tried Perplexity as well and got a similar result. This is a good sign.) 

The most interesting thing here is the mention of Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife, Alice, who visited the Yucatán and Cozumel in the 1870s. Now THAT is a useful lead for us SRSers. (It's worth reading their Wikipedia page. What an adventurous couple!)  

I did the obvious searches, e.g. this one and similar:  

     [ Le Plongeon Cozumel photographs OR photo ]

and quickly learned that the best resource for this Challenge were the books that they'd published (or were written about them).  

As you know, Google Books is a great resource, but once again the Internet Archive (Archive.org) is a fabulous resource:

Notice that I did a search on Archive.org searching the full text (and not just the metadata).  This led me to a happy morning of reading several books that were published about the Le Plongeons travels in Mexico.  

Example: I read through Lawrence Desmond's book, Yucatán through Her Eyes: Alice Dixon Le Plongeon,Writer & Expeditionary Photographer. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009.  In there I found that:

“In early February, [1877] they decided to leave Isla Mujeres and sail for Cozumel Island, about seventy-five miles south of Isla Mujeres and ten miles off the coast. Today the island is a tourist destination complete with an international airport, but in the 1870s only a few travelers visited the island, and Alice noted it had only “five hundred inhabitants” (ADLP 1886a:28).”  Page 222. 

In that book, on page 90, you'll find a 1876 photo of several large axes and flint spear heads on page 90.  So they're clearly taking photos on Cozumel in 1876.  

Then, in the book: The Mayas, the sources of their history. Dr. Le Plongeon in Yucatan, his account of discoveries, by Salisbury, Stephen  you'll find several letters from Le Plongeon in 1877, written from Cozumel and commenting that they left Cozumel in 1879.   

Finally, after lots of scanning around through various books, I landed on Here and there in the Yucatan Alice D. Le Plongeon. (1889)  On page 36 you'll find this photo: 

P/C Wikimedia. From the book "Here and There in the Yucatan" by Alice Le Plongeon.
The book was published in 1889, but the photo was probably taken in 1876 or 1877 when the Le Plongeons were visiting Cozumel.  

If you remember from earlier discussions, photography was invented in 1822, and the first real photos started coming out in 1826. 

So I'm pretty sure this is the one of the first photos taken on Cozumel.  

SearchResearch Lessons

1. Don't believe everything you read.  LLMs can be (as we've seen multiple times) misled by all kinds of things, including humor.  If you see something extraordinary, check it out in detail.  

2. Look at what you find and use names of people / places as leads.  Here I used the Le Plongeons as a way to find the earliest photos of Cozumel.  (I admit that I got lucky here.  But the point remains: leverage what you learn.)  

3. Books can be immensely valuable!  That might seem obvious, but I often talk with searchers who give up because they can't find a web page with the information they seek.   

4. Use Archive.org for your book research.  It’s really worthwhile getting an account at Archive.org so you can read the full text (with images) of the books you seek.  

Keep searching! 

SearchResearch Challenge (1/8/25): Earliest photograph from Cozumel, Mexico?

Simple questions are sometimes tricky. 

Lionfish at 20m (60 feet) on the reef in Cozumel, Mexico

As we've noticed before, even very simple questions sometimes bring up unexpected surprises and issues.  That's the case with this week's very simple question. 

As it turns out, I'm taking a vacation week in Cozumel, Mexico.  I'm scuba diving with my buddies and as you know, travel often begets questions in the curious mind. 

I started searching for the earliest photos I could find taken on Cozumel.  Easy, right?  Turns out there are interesting issues here.  See if you can spot the biggest issue and work around it! 

This week's SearchResearch Challenge isn't hard, but I think it's an important one that speaks to the future of doing online research.  Let's figure it out together.  

1. What is the earliest / oldest photograph you can find that was taken on Cozumel?

I know, it sounds simple--but can you find the issue with this question?  

Let us know what you find. 

Keep searching! 

 

Imagine that I'm here.
P/C LRM from Pexels.com

Answer: What's the most significant thing going on here? (3/3)

I didn't mean to write three posts...  

But this is a big problem!     

I have to sympathize with Ramón and remmij’s comments about having a sense of overwhelmment in the SRS space.  We’re living in a frenzied time–when new systems and products are bubbling up every day and in every way.  It’s easy to give up… but don’t.   

A Gemini-generated image of Dan being overwhelmed by the
number of choices when doing Deep Research.

Here, at the SearchResearch Rancho, we’ll try to shed some light on what works, and what you can safely ignore. Isn’t that why you come here?  For a bit of clarity and guidance in these complicated times?  Let’s see what we can figure out.  

As I mentioned earlier this week, a new trend in SRS is the launch of several new “deep research” tools.  In today’s post I’m going to compare / contrast three of them.  (For simplicity, and to make a small pun, I’m going to call these tools “DR” tools.   

(1) Google’s DR tool is their “Deep Research” mode for Gemini.  (I can’t give a direct link to it because Gemini doesn’t use URL parameters.  You have to manually select the “1.5 Pro with Deep Research” option to get it to show up.  Sorry about that.)  The idea is that "1.5 Pro with Deep Research" will write you a short summary on some research topic.  

(2) Undermind.ai  a "personal assistant" to help you with collecting, analyzing, summarizing work in a particular topic area.  

(3) OpenScholar (from Allen.ai) a DR tool that scans the scholarly literature (and sometimes it refuses to do so!) and writes a summary much in the style of Google 1.5 Pro w/ DR.

(For a list of other deep research systems, take a look at the SlashDot list of DR systems.) 

The idea behind all of these DR systems is to use AI techniques to analyze large volumes of complex data, looking for in-depth insights and discovery beyond traditional research methods. The hope is that these tools will find complex relationships and patterns within the data that might be difficult to identify manually.  Each of them writes a little report on what they found giving citations to the literature they used. 

To compare each of these systems I asked two questions.  

A. What has been the effects of the creation of Lake Nasser on the ecosystems around it?

B. What has been the effect of the creation of Lake Nasser on the incidence of schistosomiasis in Egypt? 

Question A is to answer our primary question (“what are the most important changes..”) 

Question B dives more deeply into a particular question about schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that’s caused by blood flukes (trematode worms) of the genus Schistosoma transmitted by freshwater snails that often live in agricultural canals.. It’s a very serious disease. Can these DR systems help us understand this important change?   

Here’s what I found when using these DR systems… 

Question A:  (effect of Lake Nasser on the ecosystems)  

Google:  The DR tool (using Google’s “Gemini Advanced 1.5 Pro with Deep Research” on January 2, 2025) created a 2400 word report (link to report) that covers a bit of the history of Lake Nasser, and then lists positive and negative effects. Ecological projects are mentioned and a section entitled “Scholarly Research on the Ecological Impact of Lake Nasser” includes a very obscure data set on water quality.  (The data is important–but why copy/paste part of the raw data in the report?)  It mentions the “South Valley Project” (another name for the Toshka Lakes). 

Oddly, the report cites TWO Kids.Brittanica.com reports, a few studies by international organizations (e.g., WorldFish international), a few Wikipedia articles, and a couple of scientific literature studies.  

Overall grade: It’s not bad, but there are a few sections that are just odd–not something a human would ever write.  

=================================

Undermind:  When you use Undermind, it starts with a little back-and-forth trying to get you to add more detail to the research question. That’s fine, but it also ends up narrowing the scope of the research. In my case, the final question posed to Undermind was “The ecological impacts of the creation of Lake Nasser, focusing on changes and adaptations in both aquatic ecosystems within the lake and terrestrial ecosystems surrounding the area.”  

Here’s the top of the Undermind report: 

Undermind also provides a helpful summary of the Categories of papers it found: 

And a very helpful timeline of research work: 

As well as a very interesting set of clusters of research groups and contributions by each group: 

The references (at the end of the report show the expected citation info, but also a measure of the topic match, the number of citations / year (indicates how often it gets cited), and a summary of the relevance of the paper to the topic: 

Overall grade: Undermind gives you much more information that Google’s DR report, including analysis that Google won’t give you.  (e.g., the clustering) 

=================================

OpenScholar: By contrast, Ai2 OpenScholar took the same research question and wrote a fairly short, cursory report. Here’s the top of that report: 

There are only 3 references given, and one of them (Goher et al. 2021) is used for 6 of the 10 citations. What’s more, the Goher paper was published in the journal Water, which is a publication of the MDPI (Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute), which has a not-great reputation. (You can read the Wikipedia page to learn more.)  In any case, it’s not a paper I would choose to center my critical review of Lake Nasser ecosystems, even though the paper data seems reasonable enough.  

Overall grade: It’s not bad, but there are a few sections that are just odd–not something a human would ever write.  And the overall quality of the cited works was a little suspicious.  (I found other examples of papers I’m not sure I would cite in OpenScholar analysis reports.  OpenScholar–what are you doing??)  

=================================

Question B: (effect of Lake Nasser on Schistosomiasis)

Google:  In reply to the Schistosomiasis research question, Google’s DR tool created another report (link to report) that is structurally similar to the other report… it too covers a bit of the history of Lake Nasser and environmental issues.  It has a section on public health interventions, and then the effects of Lake Nasser on the incidence of Schistosomiasis, pointing out that a massive anti-snail / anti-Schistosomiasis campaign has caused an overall REDUCTION in the incidence of the disease.  

Overall grade: Again, it’s not bad.. But there are some contradictory statements (e.g., while Schistosomiasis overall has gone down, another subspecies of Schistosomiasis (specifically, Schistosomiasis mansoni) has actually increased.  The obvious question a human would ask is “is this overall good, or bad for the country.”  That’s never really addressed.  

=================================

Undermind:  By contrast, Undermind doesn’t really write much of a report–it really gives a bunch of research result in the literature.  What little it says about the incidence of Schistosomiasis slightly contradicts Google.  In particular, it writes that: 

  “The creation of Lake Nasser after the construction of the Aswan High Dam significantly increased schistosomiasis transmission in Upper and Middle Egypt by altering ecological conditions that favored the proliferation of snail vectors …, though public health interventions such as mass drug administration and mollusciciding effectively reduced disease prevalence in most areas despite persistent hotspots.”  

Overall grade:  Undermind gives a completely different set of relevant papers than Google Gemini!  (There is zero overlap.)  But it does give a deeper analysis about why Lake Nasser changed the way that Egyptians use canals for agriculture, leading to an increase in the disease!  

=================================

OpenScholar: I’m not sure what happened here, but I was completely unable to get it to give me any kind of answer to my schistosomiasis questions!  I tried multiple variations on the research statement question, but all I ever got was a failure notification.  

“Referenced task failed. Error: We were unable to retrieve any relevant papers for your query. Please try a different query. OpenScholar is not designed to answer non-scientific questions or questions that require sources outside the scientific literature.” 

Overall grade: Not a great performance.  I spent probably an hour trying different variations on the theme (including logging in on a different account), but for whatever reason, it just refused to answer.  

SearchResearch Lessons

Let’s start with the post from 2 weeks ago… 

1. When getting an overview, consider using maps… and in particular, consider using time lapse.  They’re relatively easy to get, and give you a very different perspective on regional questions.  

2. Asking LLMs these questions is a good idea.. BUT ONLY if you look at multiple different AI systems.  As we saw last week, each of these can give you a very different idea about what the issues are.  But aggregating the results can give you a decent overview.  (Do not, however, take the frequency of topics mentioned as a proxy for importance!  That’s kind of random–multiple mentions do not equal overall importance!)  

3. The Deep Research (DR) tools are a new kind of thing for doing serious research. While interesting, they’re not a substitute for real human research.  (At least not yet.)  Like LLMs, each has their own perspectives (which can be useful when taken together), but don’t seem to have great quality control about what papers are high quality.  

As ever, check your work--now more than ever.  The DR systems are really interesting tools, but they’re not quite a replacement for your good research skills and discernment.  

In the future we’ll talk about other DR tools, including: ResearchRabbit, Elicit, Iris, Affor.ai and NotebookLM.  We’ll talk about those soon.  (But I didn’t want to write a book about them.. At least not yet!)   

Keep searching!  

Answer: What's the most significant thing going on here? (2/3)

This is even bigger than I thought...  

How DO we approach a research problem like this?  

P/C Google Earth

The bigger SRS Challenge for us  is... how much has Lake Nasser changed the lands around it?  

Here’s part 2 of our mini-series on answering this complex question about the effects of creating Lake Nasser.  

An ‘ordinary’ search for the obvious query might be: 

 

  [ effects of creating Lake Nasser ]

 

This gives a bunch of ordinary organic results in the way we're used to doing--but the AI powered list at the top gives a set of positive and negative effects as well. 

Seeing this list made me think that comparing the 4 top LLM systems answers to this question would be interesting.  Here’s the list of effects given by each of the most popular LLM question-answering systems: 

 

Gemini

 

Positive effects:

Increased agricultural productivity: By regulating Nile flooding, Lake Nasser allows for controlled irrigation, enabling increased crop yields and expanded agricultural land in Egypt.

 

Hydroelectric power generation: The dam generates substantial electricity for Egypt.

 

Flood control: The reservoir behind the dam helps mitigate devastating Nile floods.

 

Negative effects:

Population displacement: The flooding caused by Lake Nasser led to the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Nubian people from their traditional homes in both Egypt and Sudan.

 

Loss of archaeological sites: Ancient Egyptian temples and other archaeological sites were submerged by the rising water levels, including parts of the Abu Simbel complex which required costly relocation efforts.

 

Reduced soil fertility: The Nile's natural silt deposition, which enriched downstream agricultural lands, was significantly reduced due to the dam, necessitating increased reliance on artificial fertilizers.

 

Ecological disruption: Changes in water flow and sediment levels impacted the aquatic ecosystem of the Nile, affecting fish populations and other aquatic life.

 

Potential for waterborne diseases: Stagnant water in the reservoir could create conditions favorable for the spread of waterborne diseases if not properly managed.

 

 

Copilot lists these as the major effects, a mix of positive and negative: 

 

Displacement of Nubians: Tens of thousands of Nubian people were forced to relocate from their ancestral lands, which were submerged by the lake.

 

Environmental Impact: The damming of the Nile altered the natural flow of nutrients, impacting the sardine fishery in the eastern Mediterranean. It also led to changes in the local ecosystem, affecting flora and fauna..

 

Agricultural Benefits: The reservoir provided a stable water source for irrigation, transforming previously arid land into productive farmland.

 

Hydroelectric Power: The dam generates hydroelectric power, contributing significantly to Egypt's energy supply.

 

Flood Control: The dam helps control the Nile's flooding, protecting downstream areas from catastrophic floods.

 

Tourism and Recreation: Lake Nasser has become a popular destination for tourists and offers recreational activities.

 

 

Claude tells us that:

 

Environmental Effects: The creation of Lake Nasser fundamentally altered the Nile River ecosystem. The massive reservoir submerged vast areas of land, creating one of the world's largest artificial lakes. This led to significant changes including:

 

Disruption of the natural flood cycle that had historically deposited fertile silt along the Nile Valley.

Increased evaporation of water from the large surface area, leading to some water loss

Creation of new aquatic habitats, supporting different fish species and wildlife

Prevention of nutrient-rich sediments from reaching the Mediterranean, affecting marine ecosystems

 

Social and Cultural Impacts:

The formation of the lake had profound effects on local communities:

 

Forced relocation of over 100,000 Nubian people from their ancestral lands

Submergence of numerous archaeological sites, though many were rescued through UNESCO's salvage campaign

Loss of traditional farming practices that depended on annual flooding

Creation of new fishing communities around the lake

 

Economic Benefits:

Lake Nasser provided several economic advantages:

 

Improved flood control, protecting Egyptian communities from devastating floods

Enhanced hydroelectric power generation, providing electricity for development

Creation of a significant fishing industry on the lake

 

Increased agricultural stability through regulated water supply

 

Development of tourism around both the dam and lake

 

Agricultural Changes:

The lake's formation transformed Egyptian agriculture:

 

Year-round irrigation became possible, allowing multiple growing seasons

 

Loss of natural soil fertilization from flood sediments, increasing reliance on artificial fertilizers

 

Expansion of irrigated agriculture in previously marginal areas

 

Changes in crop patterns and farming techniques

 

Long-term Challenges:

Several ongoing issues emerged:

 

Accumulation of sediments in the reservoir, reducing storage capacity

 

Increased soil salinization in some agricultural areas due to changed irrigation patterns

 

Coastal erosion along the Nile Delta due to reduced sediment flow

 

Management of water resources during drought periods

 

 

 

ChatGPT lists these as the major effects, a mix of positive and negative, as well as giving a few future-looking results as well: 

 

Positive Effects

Water Regulation and Flood Control: The Aswan High Dam allowed Egypt to regulate the flow of the Nile, preventing devastating annual floods that historically damaged crops and settlements. It enabled year-round irrigation, improving agricultural productivity.

 

Hydroelectric Power Generation: The dam provides a significant portion of Egypt's electricity, supporting industrialization and improving living standards.

 

Reservoir for Drought Periods:  Lake Nasser acts as a vast reservoir, storing water during high-flow years for use in drought periods, ensuring water security for agriculture and drinking.

 

Fisheries Development:  The lake has become a source of fish, providing livelihoods and a food source for local communities.

 

Economic Growth:  With water availability and energy production, Egypt advanced in industrial and agricultural sectors.

 

Negative Effects

 

Environmental Changes:  The dam traps silt that would have naturally replenished the fertile Nile Delta, leading to soil degradation and increased reliance on chemical fertilizers.

 

Erosion of the Nile Delta: Without sediment deposits, the delta is eroding, threatening coastal ecosystems and agriculture.

 

Displacement of Communities:  Approximately 100,000 Nubians were displaced, losing their ancestral lands and heritage as the area was submerged.

 

Cultural and Archaeological Loss:  Important historical sites, such as ancient Nubian temples, were submerged. Some, like Abu Simbel, were relocated, but many were lost.

 

Ecological Disruptions: Changes in the river’s flow and temperature have affected ecosystems downstream, reducing biodiversity and altering fish populations.

 

Increased Evaporation: Lake Nasser’s large surface area in a hot desert climate leads to significant water loss due to evaporation, reducing the overall water availability.

 

Impact on Downstream Nations:  The regulation of Nile flow has created tensions with downstream countries, particularly Sudan and Ethiopia, regarding water-sharing rights and access.

 

Long-Term Implications

 

Climate Change Amplification:  The dam and lake exacerbate vulnerabilities to climate change, such as rising temperatures and changing rainfall patterns in the Nile Basin.

 

Transboundary Water Conflicts: The dam has intensified debates over water use, particularly with Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), complicating regional water diplomacy.

 

Sustainability Challenges:  High sedimentation rates within Lake Nasser could reduce its storage capacity over time, challenging its effectiveness.

 

 

As you can see, the LLMs vary a bit from one to the other.  Here’s a table of the different factors that each system mentions:

 

(Click on this image to expand.) 

Each row shows the agreement between the systems.  Gemini lists 3 positives and 5 negatives while ChatGPT lists 5 positives and 12 negatives.  Blanks point out the places where one of the LLMs does NOT mention one of the factors.  Only ChatGPT suggests that Lake Nasser would be a net positive factor for economic growth, and only ChatGPT mentions increased salinization as a net negative factor. 

And, as you can see, each of the systems has a fairly different take on the effects of the Aswan Dam and the creation of Lake Nasser.  

It’s pretty clear that Gemini has the simplest take on the question, while ChatGPT has the broadest list of factors.  Oddly, only Gemini mentions “potential for waterborne diseases” and only Claude mentions “increased salinization” as possible issues while both Gemini and ChatGPT list “loss of archaeological sites” as a problem.

As a SearchResearcher you need to keep these differences in mind.  One system isn’t necessarily better than the others, but they DO have very different takes on what our research question means.  

Obviously, for a full SRS style research analysis, you’d want to dig into each of these factors and get some ground truth about each of these questions. Is Claude correct in telling us that "increased salinization" is an issue? Is Gemini right about how building of the Aswan dam will increase the potential for waterborne diseases? 

We could spend another complete post on that waterborne disease issue alone!  (And if you know me, we probably will do exactly that.)  

But if you've been paying attention to the SearchResearch space, in the past couple of months several new research tools have become available that might be incredibly useful for exactly this type of deeper research.  

Undermind.ai and Google’s new Deep Research are systems that purport to take your deep research questions and do a great, focused, detailed analysis for you… exactly the kind of thing we’re asking for in this SRS Challenge.  

For our next post, we’ll try each of these new “deep research” tools and see how well they do with our Lake Nasser Challenge.

Keep searching!

Answer: What's the most significant thing going on here? (part 1/3)

 I knew this would be a big Challenge...  

... but it's a great example of the kind of SearchResearch questions that arise from the simplest of thoughts.  Simple questions can quickly lead to deep / sophisticated research.  

P/C Google Earth

The bigger question for us is this week is... how much has Lake Nasser changed the lands around it?  

Here's a closeup of a piece of the Lake Nasser shore now: 

As you can see, there are now a LOT of trees and bushes that are well-irrigated by the lake's rise and fall with the annual rains.  

This is one effect of creating Lake Nasser, there are probably others.  In particular, how does all of this new vegetation change the environment?  Is it unimportant? Or does it profoundly change things?  

For the last SRS Challenge of 2024, I'd like you to do a little bit of analysis and find out: 

1. What has been the most important change in the Lake Nasser region since the lake was created in 1970?  We know the effects of creating the reservoir for Egypt downstream of Aswan, but what about the region upstream (i.e., to the south)?  

As I said, there's no single obviously correct answer to this question--and that's part of the point. 

So... how does one approach such an all-encompassing question?   

My first thought was to look for time-lapse images to get an overview.  As we've discussed before (2017--Seeing Across Time;  2020--Time Lapse for Fires, there are handy time lapse Earth viewing tools (e.g., Google Time Lapse or the NASA Worldview site).  

Let's dive into a time-lapse analysis and then take a second approach in the next post.  

Here's a video that I made from the Google Time Lapse site showing the changes over the past 23 years:  

This is one way to get a great overview of the area and the substantial changes that can be seen.  Not only can you see the edges of the Nile fluctuate, growing and shrinking a bit with each season, but you can also see the sudden appearance in 1999 of a set of lakes that magically appear in 1999 (in the center of the images). These are the Toshka Lakes.  

The Toshka Lakes appear when Lake Nasser has excess capacity and overflows its banks. As a precaution against any unexpected rise in Lake Nasser's water level, a spillway and channel were built in 1978. That spillway pointed towards the low-lying area that are now the Toshka Lakes. 

In 1997, the Egyptian government decided to develop the Toshka Lakes region, where planned agricultural and industrial communities would develop. It has been an ambitious project which was meant to help Egypt cope with its rapidly growing population and create additional farmlands to feed the people.  

Luckily for the government, the Toshka Lakes initially formed from massive flash floods and river floods in Ethiopia the next year (1998). The Aswan High Dam managed the flow for a while, but the flood control plan called for diverting excess water to the Toshka Lakes region. The excess water flowed through the spillway, just as planned and formed a series of lakes, just as planned. As a consequence, agricultural activity in the Toshka Lakes region rose rapidly in the 2000s, but soon the water levels of the lakes declined and became empty again by 2018.

You can see this in these side-by-side images taken from the video. The lakes appeared in late 1999 and show up first in the image from 2000. (They were large and obvious enough to be noticed by astronauts on the ISS.)  

By late 2018, the lakes are empty (see center image below).  The lakes are refilled after heavy rainfall in Sudan and South Sudan in the summer of 2019 with major flooding events in Sudan in 2020, 2021, and 2022. 

Initially, the flooding of the low-lying depression was a side-effect of heavy rain pouring too much water into Lake Nasser.  The depressions filled up with water, and voila--instant farmland. (It's unclear how much of this is a happy accident vs. pre-planned.  It feels like there's a bit of revisionist history in the telling of the formation of Toshka Lakes from sites I can find.)   

In any case, it's a real thing now, with a permanent canal--the Sheikh Zayad Canal--to keep pumping water from Lake Nasser from the Mubarak Pumping station into the Toshka Lakes, with lots of peripheral canals to water the farms.  As you can see, they're mostly center pivot irrigation (previous SRS about center pivot), mostly growing wheat, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, beans. okra, and green peppers. 

Base map from Google Maps. Annotation by Dan showing the course of the Sheikh Zayad Canal.  
The Mubarak Pumping Station is in the lower right on the shore of Lake Nasser.

While the canal was planned to be 320 km in length, currently only about 129 km (as I measured it on Google Maps)--that's a lot of canal, with plenty left to build.  

All of this is pretty obvious by looking at the time-lapse images.  

Building the High Dam at Aswan allowed for the entire Toshka Lakes project. It's a huge project that's been in process for 27 years, surviving as different governments come and go (and shift in their level of support--a characteristic for many multi-year government projects).  

And it's also clear that there's a lot of shift in the lake shoreline as the rains vary from year to year.  Here's a comparison of two different years at the Mubarak Pumping Station.  Notice the differences between a high-water year and a low-water year.  

Some of the islands that are evident in 2012 are not to be found in the 2004 (high water) image.  

What does this mean for the plants and animals of Lake Nasser?  

We'll pick up this theme in the next post.  (This one is getting too long as it is.  More tomorrow!)  

Keep searching!  

Answer: What's the most significant thing going on here? (part 1/2)

 I knew this would be a big Challenge...  

... but it's a great example of the kind of SearchResearch questions that arise from the simplest of thoughts.  Simple questions can quickly lead to deep / sophisticated research.  

P/C Google Earth

The bigger question for us is this week is... how much has Lake Nasser changed the lands around it?  

Here's a closeup of a piece of the Lake Nasser shore now: 

As you can see, there are now a LOT of trees and bushes that are well-irrigated by the lake's rise and fall with the annual rains.  

This is one effect of creating Lake Nasser, there are probably others.  In particular, how does all of this new vegetation change the environment?  Is it unimportant? Or does it profoundly change things?  

For the last SRS Challenge of 2024, I'd like you to do a little bit of analysis and find out: 

1. What has been the most important change in the Lake Nasser region since the lake was created in 1970?  We know the effects of creating the reservoir for Egypt downstream of Aswan, but what about the region upstream (i.e., to the south)?  

As I said, there's no single obviously correct answer to this question--and that's part of the point. 

So... how does one approach such an all-encompassing question?   

My first thought was to look for time-lapse images to get an overview.  As we've discussed before (2017--Seeing Across Time;  2020--Time Lapse for Fires, there are handy time lapse Earth viewing tools (e.g., Google Time Lapse or the NASA Worldview site).  

Let's dive into a time-lapse analysis and then take a second approach in the next post.  

Here's a video that I made from the Google Time Lapse site showing the changes over the past 23 years:  

This is one way to get a great overview of the area and the substantial changes that can be seen.  Not only can you see the edges of the Nile fluctuate, growing and shrinking a bit with each season, but you can also see the sudden appearance in 1999 of a set of lakes that magically appear in 1999 (in the center of the images). These are the Toshka Lakes.  

The Toshka Lakes appear when Lake Nasser has excess capacity and overflows its banks. As a precaution against any unexpected rise in Lake Nasser's water level, a spillway and channel were built in 1978. That spillway pointed towards the low-lying area that are now the Toshka Lakes. 

In 1997, the Egyptian government decided to develop the Toshka Lakes region, where planned agricultural and industrial communities would develop. It has been an ambitious project which was meant to help Egypt cope with its rapidly growing population and create additional farmlands to feed the people.  

Luckily for the government, the Toshka Lakes initially formed from massive flash floods and river floods in Ethiopia the next year (1998). The Aswan High Dam managed the flow for a while, but the flood control plan called for diverting excess water to the Toshka Lakes region. The excess water flowed through the spillway, just as planned and formed a series of lakes, just as planned. As a consequence, agricultural activity in the Toshka Lakes region rose rapidly in the 2000s, but soon the water levels of the lakes declined and became empty again by 2018.

You can see this in these side-by-side images taken from the video. The lakes appeared in late 1999 and show up first in the image from 2000. (They were large and obvious enough to be noticed by astronauts on the ISS.)  

By late 2018, the lakes are empty (see center image below).  The lakes are refilled after heavy rainfall in Sudan and South Sudan in the summer of 2019 with major flooding events in Sudan in 2020, 2021, and 2022. 

Initially, the flooding of the low-lying depression was a side-effect of heavy rain pouring too much water into Lake Nasser.  The depressions filled up with water, and voila--instant farmland. (It's unclear how much of this is a happy accident vs. pre-planned.  It feels like there's a bit of revisionist history in the telling of the formation of Toshka Lakes from sites I can find.)   

In any case, it's a real thing now, with a permanent canal--the Sheikh Zayad Canal--to keep pumping water from Lake Nasser from the Mubarak Pumping station into the Toshka Lakes, with lots of peripheral canals to water the farms.  As you can see, they're mostly center pivot irrigation (previous SRS about center pivot), mostly growing wheat, tomatoes, onions, cucumbers, beans. okra, and green peppers. 

Base map from Google Maps. Annotation by Dan showing the course of the Sheikh Zayad Canal.  
The Mubarak Pumping Station is in the lower right on the shore of Lake Nasser.

While the canal was planned to be 320 km in length, currently only about 129 km (as I measured it on Google Maps)--that's a lot of canal, with plenty left to build.  

All of this is pretty obvious by looking at the time-lapse images.  

Building the High Dam at Aswan allowed for the entire Toshka Lakes project. It's a huge project that's been in process for 27 years, surviving as different governments come and go (and shift in their level of support--a characteristic for many multi-year goverment projects).  

And it's also clear that there's a lot of shift in the lake shoreline as the rains vary from year to year.  Here's a comparison of two different years at the Mubarak Pumping Station.  Notice the differences between a high-water year and a low-water year.  

Some of the islands that are evident in 2012 are not to be found in the 2004 (high water) image.  

What does this mean for the plants and animals of Lake Nasser?  

We'll pick up this theme in the next post.  (This one is getting too long as it is.  More tomorrow!)  

Keep searching!  

SearchResearch Challenge (12/18/24): What's the most important thing going on here?

 As you might have guessed, 

... during the fortnight break I travelled to Egypt for a too-short two-week trip up and down the Nile by boat.  Starting in Cairo and ending up at the amazing temples at Abu Simbel in the far south, we crossed a lot of river, desert, and history in the process.  

One of the most striking images was of flying over Lake Nasser, a huge reservoir formed by the dam at the ancient city of Aswan, making a lake that's some  222.63 mi (358.28 km) long.  You can barely spot Aswan in the image below at the point where the lake turns into a well-behaved river.  

P/C Google Earth

As we've mentioned before (e..g,  in 2024 or 2016), traveling always causes a host of SRS questions to bubble up to the surface.  On this trip into southern Egypt and seeing the immensity of Lake Nasser raised a bunch of new questions.  

The question that seemed strikingly obvious was understanding the extent to which creating the lake has changed the ecology of the region.  As you know, the Nile used to have an annual flooding cycle each summer, when heavy tropical rains in the highlands of Ethiopia would wash down huge quantities of silt--new soil that would refresh the agricultural fields of Egypt.  

With the dam, that flooding cycle doesn't happen any more, which was a big part of the goal of the dam.  (That is, flood control.) But I couldn't help but wonder--as a consequence of the dam, Lake Nasser now has a gigantic shoreline. By one estimate, it's 7,844 km (4874 miles--but note that "shoreline length" is not a well-defined measure... it varies depending on what measurement tool you're using.  The point is it's really long.

More to the point, that long shoreline now supports a very different kind of plant life than the shore of the Nile supported before the dam.  

Here's a closeup of a piece of the Lake Nasser shore now: 

As you can see, there are now a LOT of trees and bushes that are well-irrigated by the lake's rise and fall with the annual rains.  

This is one effect of creating Lake Nasser, there are probably others.  

For the last SRS Challenge of 2024, I'd like you to do a little bit of analysis and find out: 

1. What has been the most important change in the Lake Nasser region since the lake was created in 1970?  We know the effects of creating the reservoir for Egypt downstream of Aswan, but what about the region upstream (i.e., to the south)?  

There's no single obviously correct answer to this question--and that's part of the point of this Challenge: Not everything comes with a neat, clean, single verifiable answer.  But I'm curious what YOU think are the most striking effects of creating a massive new lake in a part of the world that has never had a lake before.  

When you give your answer, please say what you did to discover the "most important change."  Your approach will determine what kind of answer you find... so be sure to give us an overview of what you did to find your answer.  (Don't just say "there's now more pollen in the air"--that's true, but give us some context about why you think that's important and HOW you found that fact!)  

I'm looking forward to what you discover!  

Keep searching!  

Taking a fortnight break

 

Sunrise over Palo Alto, CA * Nov 27, 2024

It's time for a little Rest & Relaxation for those of us laboring on the SearchResearch Rancho.  

I'm taking the next two weeks off to go on one of those trips that you've been planning for a long time... one that is finally becoming a reality.  I'll share some details after I get back, but in the meantime, SRS will be quiet until mid-December when we'll pick up the Challenges one more time.  

Hope you all have a restful and relaxing couple of weeks while I'm wandering around the planet, looking for ever more exciting SearchResearch Challenges.  For US folks:  Happy Thanksgiving!  

Best wishes for a peaceful first few weeks of December.  See you back here around December 18.  

As always, Keep Searching... it's a big and curious world out there. 

-- Dan 

P.S.  Below:  The way I imagine the SearchResearch Rancho, heavily influenced by the old Californio Ranchos... Thanks to Gemini for this vision of the [SearchResearch Californio Rancho in plein air style].  I assume there's WiFi here... 

Answer: How to look at more trend data?

Little tricks and techniques to know... 

Scales to get relative and absolute weights.
P/C Jean Poussin, from Wikipedia. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
As I mentioned last week, sometimes the tools just don't quite let you do the analysis you'd like to do. 

The key question was how to create a chart like this, with more than five variables with data from Google Trends?  (The built-in graphing tool of Google Trends only allows you to compare 5 different queries!)  

As you can see, here I'm showing 6 different holidays on the same chart. What if I wanted to compute 8 different Google Trends search volumes.  (Here the chart shows 6 different US holiday search volumes.)  

So... the obvious Challenge is this: 

1.  How can you get more than 5 search volumes compared side-by-side?  

As you probably noticed, Google Trends has a lovely built-in graphing tool... that's limited to 5 trend lines. 

Fortunately, there's a way to export the CSV of the data and that will let you compare everything side-by-side.  

If you look at this Google Trends display for searches of cranberries, oranges notice the Download symbol just to the left of the angle brackets ( <> ) to the upper right of the chart.  Clicking on that will download a CSV of the data.  If you've selected multiple Trends, then you'll get a CSV.  (And notice the lovely seasonality effects of cranberries and oranges.)   

Here's what that CSV looks like in Google Sheets: 

The thing we have to figure out is how to get 6 (or more) variables into our chart. 

Suppose we want to understand the search relationships between cranberries oranges walnuts figs blueberries.  Here's that chat on Google Trends for the past 5 years.  

Now, to add in another seasonal fruit, we have to figure out which fruit scores 100 somewhere in this chart.  If you look carefully, it's a toss-up between blueberries and figs.  BUT.. by scrubbing your mouse over the data (or looking at the CSV) you can find that the high point is figs for the period Aug 25-31, 2024, so figs will become our common baseline.  Every Trends analysis we run has to include figs so they will be comparable.   

What we'll do is to run another Trends analysis, but keeping figs in the set so we have a consistent basis to compare to.  So now, let's add in raspberries.  Here's what I get: 

It's fairly simple to then get the CSV for this data set.  Here I'm looking at it in Google Sheets: 

Then copy-paste the raspberries column from one spreadsheet to the other, and use the built-in graphing ability of the spreadsheet to give you what you want.  

That's a complicated chart, but notice the seasonal effects of cranberries and oranges.  Figs have a seasonality, but it's more complicated.  (I leave that to you to figure out why!)  

One thing to notice: If you add in a fruit that has values larger than the fig numbers, you'll have to choose THAT fruit as your baseline.  Figure out ahead of time which numbers are the largest so you can use that one as your basis of comparison. 

 

2. Since these are all relative values, are these BIG numbers, or relatively small ones?  How would you know?  

This is a ongoing puzzle for all Trends users--the numbers are all percentages with respect to each other.  That is, of the six fruits shown above, the values are all percentages of the maximum value.  (That is, 100% is figs for the period Aug 25-31, 2024.)  So, the value of 25 for blueberries on March 8, 2020, means that the "Relative Search Volume" (RSV) for blueberries on that day was 25% of the volume for figs on Aug 25.  All of the numbers are RSV values for each of the search queries.  

So, how do you get a sense of what's big or small? 

The best way to do this is to compare the RSVs to something you already know about AND is pretty flat.  

Here's a Trends chart for raspberries, blueberries and aspirin.  I used aspirin because it's fairly constant throughout the year.  Everyone has headaches all the time...   

Depending on what you're trying to analyze, you might have to find other fairly flat queries (try pharmacy or time as other queries that are fairly unchanging).  

By comparing your "fruit query RSVs" to other queries that you know about (and are fairly flat by comparison) you can get a sense of (but not the exact values for) the size and sweep of changes over time.  

SearchResearch Lessons 

1. When the tool you're using doesn't give you what you need, consider exporting the data and using a tool that DOES work for your analysis.  That's the big lesson here.  Trends won't give you more than 5, but other tools do.  Export and align the data to see what you want. 

2. Remember to compare apples to apples.  Or, in Trends case, remember that everything is an RSV (i.e., a percentage of the max).  Do NOT create two non-comparable data sets--you have to have one column in common--the value that has the max value for your data.  

Hope some of you find this useful when doing your own work.  

Keep Searching! 

SearchResearch Challenge (11/20/24): How to look at more trend data?

 Limits in your searching can be so annoying... 

Scales to get relative and absolute weights.
P/C Jean Poussin, from Wikipedia. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
... and there are times when you'd like to look at the data, but the tools just don't quite let you do the analysis you'd like to do. 

This week, I happened to be looking at which of the most common holidays in the US created the most search traffic.  Why? As you know, many people look to Google search traffic as an approximation for the level of interest in a topic, and I wanted to know which of the holidays occupies more mental space in the brains of US citizens?  Christmas?  Thanksgiving?  The Super Bowl?  Or.. what?  

To figure this out, I really needed to compare multiple search queries at the same time.  Sounds great.  

But there's a problem: How can I create a chart like this, with more than 5 variables?  (Google Trends only allows you to compare 5 different queries!)  

As you can see, here I'm showing 6 different holidays on the same chart.  This is a "Relative Search Volume" chart, and not the absolute numbers.  When Google computes such charts, the measure with the largest volume will be normalized to 100%.  All of the other data is based off of that. 

So... the obvious Challenge is this: 

1.  How can you get more than 5 search volumes compared side-by-side?  

And a corresponding question: 

2. Since these are all relative values, are these BIG numbers, or relatively small ones?  How would you know?  

Tell us what you think the answers to the Challenge are in the comments.  What clever method did you use to get to 6, 7, or more variables on the same Google Trends chart?  

Keep Searching!