Okay, recording. All right. Hi everybody, welcome to Jenkins G Sock office hours today is April 1, 2022. So we don't have anything specific on the agenda today so we're going to open this up to answering any of your questions and clarifying any doubts that you have. The good thing is we did receive me see two for five completed proposal drafts so we did receive another one, but i'm not going to count that one, because that was incomplete. So, as of this time we have five five drafts in that's under review right now, so let me start sharing my screen. All right, so I see that derache you have a couple of questions so i'm going to hand it over to you, so you can ask your questions. Yes, thank you so much, Lisa. yep. So my question is around. To like if we think about the end goal of plugin health score, we will be having and we will be delivering this course via update Center, so do we agree on that. So actually i'm not i'm not yet convinced that we can deliver the scores through update Center, we may have to provide a separate data service to do it. Because the update Center payload is already so heavyweight that the people who manage update Center are concerned adding scoring to it will will be overwhelmingly bad. So, so somewhere we've got to have a service that provides it i'm not sure if it will be an update Center or somewhere else, but there's certainly a place that has to deliver for a plugin what its health score is. It may be a separate service, did that answer your question derache. Yes, it did, but it raised other questions as well. Then if if you're talking about the other service, so are we thinking about doing a project where we would be implementing rest API's and. Making them available through the same kind of Jason object. Yes, yeah I think that's I don't know if it would be a rest API but I, for instance update Center today just downloads a large Jason file. And I could envision us having another Jason file that provides the provides the scoring information is it did that did that address your question. Yes, it did, but i'm trying to just think like how can we do that. Any hints on that. Well, so what I would envision is just as update Center has a facility today that allows you to create a local copy of an update Center for testing purposes for for interactions, you would create something similar and and using that that that concept Oh, I want to run a local local copy of this thing that delivers proud plugin health health score data. Okay, sure. So I think I might need to do more research on this. So, yes. My question second question. Is what do we mean by monitoring under the delivery section that was written in our those idea page of this project. Okay, so we'd have to we'd have to go to that page so let's see. Can you get us this stop sharing like. Yeah, or we may be able to get to have you navigate there or I can let me go see if I can find it. So this was the project idea page right there, Raj.  Not yet. No, I'm, I'm just finding the page so that I bring it up and then I'll share just a minute. Okay, so sharing my screen now. Are you referring to something on this page. Okay, all right. Okay, data delivery. Oh, okay, got it. Right. So when when this was saying monitoring. It was things like, well, I'll show you an example of the kind of a simple minded form of monitoring that we use now. We have this thing called an acceptance test for the update site. So just a minute and we'll go there. So on ci.jenkins.io every one once an hour, it will perform a job that does something relatively simple. What it does is it runs this test.sh script. And that script is, let's see how can I find that. Grab that really quickly here. That script just looks like this. It calls another script and that script verifies this so it runs some checks. Do these URLs resolve and it does that with curl. So this is the kind of thing that that I was assuming in writing that the idea of monitoring now. This is this is a very poor monitoring system if you're talking about really infrastructure monitoring. The Jenkins project actually has a donated data dog instance that does much much more thorough monitoring and that could be used as well. But this concept was just check that it's it's responding. And all this thing does is once an hour. Checks to be sure that the site is still responding. Now in terms of production. That's not nearly good enough the infrastructure team has data dog but for for purposes of this one. This was the idea I had in mind. Does does that answer your question in terms of what what the meaning of monitoring was here. Yes, it did. Sure. So that makes sense. Now I would just need to do some research on my own to think about how will we create that service which replaces update center and about deployment and monitoring part of it as well. And for precision it's not that it would replace update center it would it would effectively sit beside update center right it could be asked, asked questions update center is asked questions about plugins and their, their dependencies. This service would be asked questions about plugins and their health score. So it's like this new service will not reinvent the wheel. It will perform the new functions but wherever possible it will take help from the current update site. Right there's no reason for us to replicate things that are already an update center like dependency information right the dependency information that's in in this kind of list. That's that's in these things is is already there we don't need to duplicate it but because health is not about dependencies anyway, I would assume you wouldn't you wouldn't discuss dependencies at all. Yes, that's true. Okay sure. So that answers my question. Great. Are there other questions for our mentors. Yes, I have one question. So it was about the hello hello Lisa. So it was about the evaluation process so we have to evaluation process defined by Google. So in the first one. So I was wondering because because of the way my schedule is there so I have my vacations before the first evaluation. So I was thinking that I would be able to complete a major part of the project before the first evaluation. And I'm upset that leaves me with little things to do offer for the second evaluation. So is it fine or should we divide our work equally amongst the two. I don't think there's any reason to to slow yourself down. If you if you've got plan time off before the that's after first evaluation, then do the do the work in the in the first phase report it, then report the content in the second phase so I don't, I don't think there's any expectation from us or from them that you'll be okay roughly 50% if you know you have to be off during the second phase for a period. That means you'll likely spend less time in that second phase on the work. What was that what you were asking beyond so it's basically conceptually you've got two or three weeks where you need to be gone during the second phase, and so you'll do most of the work in the first phase, and be be evaluation submitted for phase one. And then the evaluation of phase two will have fewer hours involved in it because you were gone for a portion of that. Yes, that is somewhat yes. Okay, some somewhat is is. What did I miss tell me tell me more about if there's something about the leaf but it was just that I would get more time so like I can work in both the phases so that's not an issue but I was wondering like I'll be able to dedicate around 150 hours and the before the first evaluation itself so perhaps even 175 so. I see so what you're saying is you may actually be able to to because the projects are scoped at 175 hours total. And your notion is you might be able to put in 175 hours even before the first evaluation. Yeah, that is the question yes. Okay, so, so, and, and that one I, you know, I don't know that. I don't know that I've seen any guidance from from Google one way or the other on that we may have to do some research separately to see what that means because I'm assuming that your mentors may not be able to support you at at x to x volume time investment. One of the challenges is the mentor team has to be ready to support your efforts as well and if you're, if you're running 40 hours a week, you know, so in a, in a four or six week period you're going to get 160 hours in. That's, that's going to be that may be heavier than the mentors are able to support. Okay. Now, now if it turns out that those extra hours don't mean an extra load on the mentors. No objection that just one of my worries would be the scoping at 175 hours is in part because we don't also don't want to overload the mentors. Thank you. Good question. Very good. So while we wait are there other guidance that you might or have that you can share with with our potential contributors mark other things that you can think of, or Kristen or Chris. So, so I've, I've liked the, the thought that's going into, how do we fit things into timelines. How do we at Vihans Vihans question leads towards that right it's how how specifically how do we, how do we partition the work into phases into weeks or periods that fit with the plan for Google summer of code so by all means be thinking about that and and yes certainly considering technical details. How does this part fit with that part. Be sure that you're doing some things that involve you in code with the Jenkins project. I think that is a good example of what I've seen is submitted submitted pull request to the get client plug in with specific changes.  Good feedback. Thank you. I think the garage has another question I've used carbon dot now for adding code snippets to the proposal might be helpful for someone. Okay. It's in the chat window mark. Yeah, I've never seen carbon so it does a picture of source code. Yeah, you just need to paste your code and you can select the different themes as per your liking and it will present the code beautifully and you can just take a snippet, save it in a png form and add it to your proposal, rather than just copy pasting the text on your proposal. Interesting. Okay. So you have a code extension option and Google Docs, which actually you can install and then you can format your text like a code and any language basically it detects the language automatically for shell script Java C++ Python anything. I wasn't aware of that extension beyond any chance you could share a link to that extension. Sure. Just a minute. But like for the body feedback on the proposals. Like what is the procedure and isn't it like you guys would be planning to have a certain amount of mentors view each proposal or comment on each proposal. Yeah, so our plan is to have the initial plan is to have the mentors for that project idea focus on the proposals for their project idea. And then the second part is that we would solicit for additional mentors to review it as well. So that's that's the current plan right now. So is there like any date that this would happen by or I would have to take a look and I can take a look back at the Google Summer of Code timeline, and then I'll stick the dates on our, on our, our agenda page right here. Alyssa I think I think Arjen specifically asking about the drafts that they've submitted so Arjen, if I remember correctly what your draft is related to get if I remember right did I remember correctly. Yeah, sorry I'm behind schedule on doing those reviews I, I solemnly promise that I will do those reviews and give you the feedback. Yeah. And so, so my expectation is that before next office hours. So before next, next Thursday, I will have given feedback that way you have time enough before the be the opening of of applications to Google because if I remember correctly Alyssa is an April nine the opening of applications to Google. I think that's about right. So we will definitely get feedback back to you. Yeah, with, with my hope is that it will be this before the end of this weekend so before Monday your time, but, but work has been a little busy, work spent a little busy with a certain problem here and there and everywhere. Yeah, that's right. More time for me to work on my proposal. Exactly and that's that's why it's, it's, it's, it would be terrible of us to have asked you please get those into us and then for us not to give you feedback. Yeah, that's, thank you very much for submitting your draft, and, and we'll use that draft as, as the platform that we want it to be to help you have a good proposal as you bring your proposal all the way to submission. Thank you. Yeah, I'll try to work with the mentors to get some dates in for you guys so you have an idea that when we can try to shoot for a deadline to get feedback back to you. So we're probably thinking about more questions so then right after this office hour we will be having a brainstorming session. So if you guys would like to join that the information is on the Gitter page, the Gitter channel discussion so take a look at that and I think the, the, the dial in is different so use the dial in that I, I had placed in the Gitter channel. That's, that's for the get cash maintenance proposal. So, if, if you're not working on the get cash maintenance proposal you don't need to attend. There's not, not any real benefit to you, if you attend something where we're discussing detailed technical components of the, the get cash maintenance proposals. Interesting. Okay. So Vihan has shared the link to the code blocks syntax highlighting for Google Docs. Interesting. Yeah, that's good. Cool. Thanks for sharing that. Yes, thanks very much. I think I'm just going to go ahead and install it. If there are no others. Alyssa I think we may go ahead and just end early I'm not sure that there's much value in us just staying on the line. Any other questions now there was some controversy actually I don't, I don't detect anybody who might apply to but there was some discussion in the, the Google Summer of Code mentors list about the concept of embargoed countries. And, and there's given the current war in Ukraine. There are countries that Google is not allowed to have people participating in Google Summer of Code projects from those countries. And Russia is one of those so if you live in Russia, you are excluded. And, and so there are others North Korea for instance is excluded. There are a few others. So be sure you read now we're relying on Google to assess that. That's not the Jenkins projects job to decide if you're eligible or not. Yeah, good point. All right, well thanks. Okay. Thanks everybody. So we'll meet those who are doing the Google, the, the get code exercise will meet up in about five or six minutes. See you there. Bye.


Welcome to this next session of AWS Storage Day. I'm your host Dave Vellante of theCUBE. And right now we're going to explore how to simplify and evolve your data lake backup disaster recovery and analytics in the cloud. And we're joined by Kevin Miller, who's the general manager of Amazon S3. Kevin, welcome. Thanks Dave, great to see you again. Good to see you too. So listen, S3 started as like a small ripple in the pond in over the last 15 years. I mean, it's fundamentally changed the storage market. We used to think about storage as a box of disk drives that either stored data in blocks or file formats. Then object storage at the time is going to use an archival storage. You needed specialized application interfaces. S3 changed all of that. Why do you think that happened? Well, I think first and foremost, it's really just that customers appreciated the value of S3 and being fully managed where we manage capacity that capacity is always available for customers to bring new data into S3. And really, therefore, to remove a lot of the constraints around building their applications and deploying new workloads and testing new workloads where they know that if something works great, it can scale up by 100X or 1000X. And if it doesn't work, they can remove the data and move on to the next application or next experiment they want to try. And so really, it's exciting to me really exciting when I see businesses across essentially every industry, every geography, innovate and really use data in new and really interesting ways within their business to really drive actual business results. So it's not just about having data to build a report and have a human look at a report, but actually really drive the day-to-day operation of their business. So that can include things like personalization or doing deeper analytics and industrial and manufacturing. Customer like Georgia Pacific, for example, I think is one of the great examples where they use a big data lake and collect a lot of sensor data, IoT sensor data, off of their paper manufacturing machine so they can run them at just the right speed to avoid tearing the paper as it's going through, which really just keeps their machines running more and therefore just reduce their downtime and costs associated with it. So just that transformation again, across many industries, almost every industry that I can think of, that's really what's been exciting to see and continue to see. I think we're still in just the really early days of what we're going to see as far as that innovation goes. Yeah, I got to agree. I mean, it's been pretty remarkable. Maybe you could talk about the pace of innovation for S3. I mean, if anything, it seems to be accelerating. How, Kevin, does AWS, how has it thought about innovation over the past decade plus and where do you see it headed? Yeah, that's a great question, Dave. Really innovation is at our core, it's part of our core DNA. S3 launched more than 15 years ago, almost 16 years old. We're going to get a learner's permit for it next year, but as it's grown to exabytes of storage and trillions of objects, we've seen almost every use case you can imagine. I'm sure there's a new one coming that we haven't seen yet, but we've learned a lot from those use cases. And every year we just think about, what can we do next to further simplify? And so you've seen that as we've launched over the last few years, things like S3 intelligent tiering, which was really the cloud's first storage class to automatically optimize and reduce customers costs for storage for data that they were storing for a long time and based on variable access patterns. We launched S3 access points to provide a simpler way to have different applications operating on shared data sets. We launched earlier this year S3 Object Lambda, which really is, I think, cool technology. We're just starting to see how it can be applied to simplify serverless application development, really the next wave, I think, of application development that doesn't need, not only is the storage fully managed, but the compute is fully managed as well, really just simplify that whole end-to-end application development. Okay, so we heard this morning in the keynote some exciting news. What can you tell us, Kevin? Yeah, so this morning we launched S3 multi-region access points, and these are access points that give you a single global endpoint to access data sets that can span multiple S3 buckets in different AWS regions around the world. And so this allows you to build these multi-region applications and multi-region architectures with the same approach that you use in a single region and then run these applications anywhere around the world. Okay, so if I interpret this correctly, it's a good fit for organizations with clients or operations around the globe. So for instance, gaming, news outlets, make a content delivery types of customers. Should we think about this as multi-region storage? And why is that so important in your view? Absolutely, it is multi-region storage. And what we're hearing is seeing as customers grow and we have multinational customers who have operations all around the world. And so as they've grown and their data needs grow around the world, they need to be using multiple AWS regions to store and access that data. Sometimes it's for low latency so that it can be closer to their end users or their customers. Other times it's for regions where they just have a particular need to have data in a particular geography. But this is really a simple way of having one endpoint in front of data across multiple buckets. So for applications, it's quite easy. They just have that one endpoint and then the data that requests are automatically routed to the nearest region. Now, earlier this year, S3 turn 15, what makes S3 different, Kevin, in your view? Yeah, turn 15, it'll be 16 soon. S3 really, I think part of the difference is it just operates at really an unprecedented scale with more than 100 trillion objects and regularly peaking to tens of millions of requests per second. But it's really about the resiliency and availability and durability that are our responsibility. And we focus every single day on protecting those characteristics for customers so that they don't have to. So that they can focus on building the businesses and applications that they need to really run their business and not worry about the details of running highly available storage. And so I think that's really that one of the key differences with S3. You know, I first heard the term data lake. It was early last decade. I think it was on 2011, 2012. And obviously the phrase is stuck. How are S3 and data lakes simpatico? And how have data lakes on S3 changed or evolved over the years? Yeah, you know, the idea of data lakes, and obviously as you say, came around nine or 10 years ago, but I actually still think it's really early days for data lakes. And just from the standpoint of, you know, originally nine or 10 years ago when we talked about data lakes, we were looking at maybe tens of terabytes, hundreds of terabytes or a low number of petabytes. And for a lot of data lakes, you know, we're still seeing that that's the kind of scale that are currently they're operating at. But I'm also seeing a class of data lakes where you're talking about tens or hundreds of petabytes or even more, and really just being used to drive critical aspects of customers' businesses. And so I really think S3 has been a great place to run data lakes and continues to be. We've added a lot of capability over the last several years, specifically for that data lake use case. And we're going to continue to do that and grow the feature set for data lakes, you know, over the next many years as well. But really it's about, it goes back to the fundamentals of S3 providing that 11 nines of durability, the resiliency of having three independent data centers within regions. So the customers can use that storage, knowing their data is protected. And again, just focus on the applications on top of that data lake and also run multiple applications. But the idea of a data lake is you're not limited to one access pattern or one set of applications. If you want to try out a new machine learning application or something to do some advanced analytics, that's all possible while running the in-flight operational tools that you also have against that data. So it allows for that experimentation and for transforming businesses through new ideas. Yeah, I mean to your point if you go back to the early days of cloud, we were talking about storing, you know, gigabytes, maybe 10s of terabytes, that was big. Today we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of terabytes, petabytes. And so you got huge amount of information. Customers that are of that size and that scale, they have to optimize costs. They really, that's top of mind. How are you helping customers save on storage costs? Absolutely, Dave. I mean, cost optimization is one of the key things we look at every single year to help customers reduce their cost for storage. And so that led to things like the introduction of S3 intelligent tiering a few years ago. And that's really the only cloud storage class that just delivers the automatic storage cost savings as data access patterns change. And we deliver this without performance impact or any kind of operational overhead. It's really intended to be intelligent where customers put the data in and then we optimize the storage costs. Or for example, last year we launched S3 storage lens, which is really the first and only service in the cloud that provides organization-wide visibility into where customers are storing their data, what the request rates are and so forth against their storage. So when you talk about these data lakes of hundreds of terabytes or even smaller, these tools are just really invaluable to help customers reduce their storage costs year after year. And actually, Dave, I'm pleased that today we're also announcing a launch of some improvements to S3 intelligent tiering to actually further automate the cost savings. And what we're doing is we're actually removing the minimum storage duration. Previously, intelligent tiering had a 30 day minimum storage duration. And we're also eliminating our monitoring and automation charge for small objects. So previously there was that monitoring and automation charge applied to all objects independent of size. And now any object less than 128 kilobytes is not charged that charge. And I think some pretty critical innovations on intelligent tiering that will help customers use that for an even wider set of data lake and other applications. S3, it's ubiquitous, the innovation continues. You can learn more by attending the Storage Day S3 deep dive right after this interview. Thank you, Kevin Miller. Great to have you in the program. Yeah, Dave, thanks for having me. Great to see you. You're welcome. This is Dave Vellante and you're watching theCUBE's coverage of AWS Storage Day. Keep it right there.


Let's go to y'all Chris from jaspyscasebricks.com doing 2021-2022 upper deck premier hockey 2 box break 3 random team each number 5. Here's one of these breaks, this is our 3rd of the day, it's a fun one, we're going to kill this case and I'll load up another one. After this 10 spots, he's 3 random teams equals 30 spots total, everyone gets 3 teams in the NHL with 2 combo spots being the islanders and flamers as a spot and the capitals and kraken as a spot. So first off let's give away that free spot, we'll fill that out. We'll make this 10 repeated 3 times to make 30 spots for 30 teams. But first the spot, thanks again y'all, good luck top spot after 1-5, 6 times on this list, gets that free spot. 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 and 6, excuse me, 6 times, 6 times going to be Kevin, grabs the free spot, grabs Kev, thanks again, first spot in this break. Now we'll take this list, we'll make this 20 now, we'll take this list and make it 30 now, so 30 spots for 30 teams, we'll pull the dice and randomize on this list, snake eyes, 2 times, good luck, 1 and 2, 2 times, Kevin down to Nick and 2 times for the teams, 1 and 2. Saber is down to predators. Alright so I'll leave the trip window open for a minute or so, I had a couple offers the last time so we will see. But alphabetically you'll see how it all shook out, Kevin with the ducks, Scott with the coyotes, Kevin with the bruins and sabers, Stephen with the flims and islanders, con bus bot, Nick with the hurricanes, black ox and avalanche, nice.  Alright we're going to pause the video, we'll see you with a new trade shatter when we come back for these last two boxes of the case of Premier talking, thanks for your BRBM. Alright we're back, no trade shatter so hey, let's print, let's rip, let's switch screens our last two boxes here and here is our break sheet. So Kevin with the ducks, alright empty number five all the way down to William with the jets, let's do it. This has been a super fun case, some really nice patches, some nice autos, nice rookie autos, some vet autos, I'll double check with Nick to see if I can upload the next two boxes from a fresh case. This has been a fun one, you know we don't really have a lot of hockey on the site so when we do people like to grab it up obviously, this is the fifth box break that we're doing on this. Alright let's start it off here with Brent Burns, San Jose sharks that is two eighteen out of two ninety nine, San Jose going to William. Got a Premier rookie one of one, Phillip Tomasino, nice for the Nashville Predators and Nick, grabbed a few different spots and grabbed a nice one on one rookie, very nice man congrats. Extra base here, two nineteen out of three ninety nine, Alex Turcon Premier rookie for the Kings, can I go to Kevin, one of his three spots. Alright first patch auto, nice man congrats, that's awesome. First auto going to be Nico Doss, Premier rookie auto in patch one ninety five out of two forty nine, nice three color for the New Jersey Devils, that's also going to go to Nick. All these patches are game used, authentic as well, neon card auto to go with it. Our next auto, another rookie auto, super autographed rookie going to be Cole Soinger with the Columbus Blue Jackets, four out of ninety nine, Columbus going to Kevin on card auto, first patch, ice, OV, Alex Ovechkin two seventy one out of three hundred on the Premier Jersey. The Kraken and Capitals combo spot, that's going to go to Nick and our rookie patch going to be Gregory Denisenko for the four to Panthers. That's going to go to Nick as well, this one a non numbered patch. Ice first box of the break and here it is, the last box of our case. Thanks again everyone for getting this one filled out, appreciate it. We have a couple more bangers before we call it here, shall we? See that ghost right there, a little spooky, a little spooky ours here at all. Nazim Qadari, two ninety out of two ninety nine for the abs. One of Nick, got a Shane Pinto out of one ninety nine for the Ottawa Senators. That's Nick, one of the last spot mojo spots for Nick. Nice little lower one here, sixty one out of sixty five Premier working auto patch, Wade Allison. That's where the flyers going to go to William. Nice three color patch there. Ah shoot, this one there. And our last one is going to be Zach Jones, red foil non numbered Premier rookie auto for the Rangers. That's one more for William, nice. One more for the caps, Premier mega patch duos, three color and three color. John Carlson and one more Alex Ovechkin, twenty two out of twenty five. Nice patches, once again for that combo spot of cracking capitals, that's going to go to Nick. Twenty two out of twenty five, nice. Little symmetry there, that's dope. Close with that little blue line, but yeah, next time. And the last car going to be a nice Quinn Hughes Premier. That's for the Canucks, that's for William. Nice two boxes of one on one, pretty nice names here under that stuff too. Thanks again y'all. I'll text Nick and see if we can put up number six out of the first two boxes from our fresh case. Check the site, either way at jashescasebreaks.com. Thanks y'all, bye bye.


Everywhere you look in this forest, you see the signs of an ecosystem imbalance from the hardiness of the native plants and wildlife to the undisturbed soil and clear running streams. There are roads here too. They've also become an integral part of the forest. Their condition reflects not only the technical know-how of the people who build and maintain them, but also a keen awareness of the surrounding environment and a concern for the forest's future and our own. We're in the Coronado National Forest east of Tucson, Arizona on a road that runs from the turnoff back there to a little campground about a mile further down. In a way this stretch of road is typical of the roads throughout our national forest system. Not that this location is necessarily typical. We also have roads in national forests that are classified as rain forests or even high desert. What's typical about this road is that it's unpaved, it serves multiple needs, and it interacts profoundly with its natural surroundings. Wear and tear from traffic and weather make it necessary to repair these roads and their drainage systems periodically, but advances in science and technology have dramatically improved our understanding of how to go about it in ways that sustain both the road system and the surrounding environment. After all, national forests are among our most vital assets, and we need to preserve them for generations to come. Forest service roads hold a unique place both in our country's transportation system and in the natural environment. They provide ready access to nature for the traveling public and facilitate the management of natural resources. When any road falls into disrepair and remains untended, it can compromise the safety of drivers and the health of neighboring ecosystems. When that road runs through the complex environment of forests, environmental considerations become especially important. To understand how a road interacts with a forest, we first need to look at what happens between natural elements when there aren't any roads. It's an eons old story that begins with water and soil. Each forest has a number of watersheds that collect water from rain and melting ice and snow or from rainfall alone. The water flows over and through the forest floor as surface flow and groundwater. At first, it moves slowly downslope, dispersing over a wide area. Forceful buildup or concentration won't normally occur until the water encounters and enters small streams. From smaller streams, it travels to larger ones, and finally into the watershed outlet, usually a river. A river's water represents the accumulation of groundwater, surface flow, and stream flow. When you add a road to this picture, you risk interfering with the natural process. Roads can intercept and divert natural diffuse water flow, concentrating it randomly and prematurely. Here, the road has diverted water from its natural drainage path. It no longer descends downslope in a normal dispersed pattern. Instead, it's become concentrated and in extreme conditions may even become displaced, overloading one watershed or sub-watershed, while depleting another. Another possible consequence of a change in normal water flow patterns is for ditches and culverts to concentrate water runoff so that it flows down to small channels, streams, and rivers too quickly, overburdening them with a higher than normal water accumulation, taking place in a shorter than normal time period, increasing the effects of peak flow. Like wind, rain, and vehicle or equipment traffic, water concentration can begin the process of erosion, separating soil particles from the ground, and allowing them to be transported until they settle out in other parts of the forest, including lakes and streams. Once in the stream, the sediment changes the aquatic and adjacent riparian ecosystems. It covers up and fills in spawning beds, suffocating fish eggs, insect larvae, and other organisms. The soil also clouds the water, making it harder for the streams inhabitants to locate their diminishing food supply. Those that do survive often suffer the abrasive effects of the soil particles on their sensitive gill tissues, slowly but surely as the sediment settles out, the stream becomes shallower and warmer, further lowering survival rates of eggs and fry. The raising of a stream bed also causes the stream to become wider to accommodate the normal volume of water. This results in erosion of overhangs, the shady interlocking masses of vegetation that normally provide a sanctuary for aquatic life to hide, rest and feed. As usual in an ecosystem, local impacts don't remain local. As small creeks become sediment laden and warm up, they in turn warm and otherwise alter larger ones downstream. Neighboring human communities aren't exempt either. Sediment increases the cost of purifying drinking water and fills in reservoirs and canals. It can even damage turbine generators in hydroelectric facilities. Some effects are harder to measure than others. How can you calculate the cost of losing a choice fishing hole? Or a favorite hiking trail or campsite? Of course questions like that are impossible to answer, but there's a related question those of us who maintain forest roads ask every day. How can we have the roads we need and safeguard the environment? The answer can be found in the earlier question of where the water would go if the road didn't exist. Do everything you can to emulate the way nature moves water, and you minimize disturbance to both the road and its natural surroundings. The key to putting that principle into practice is dispersing rather than concentrating road-diverted water flow. That means using the most effective measures available for controlling the volume and velocity of water. The first step is to make sure the traffic bearing portion of the road, also known as the traveled way, has and maintains a properly defined shape. Water should move off that surface efficiently so that it doesn't degrade the road. Whenever possible the water should be released into the forest in a well dispersed pattern that doesn't disturb surrounding soil. In maintaining drainage structures like this lead-out ditch, it's important to imitate nature's way of protecting exposed areas. Vegetative materials like these reduce the speed and to a lesser degree the concentration of the water. So do ditch dams and other barriers. The flow can also be channeled into flat vegetated areas of forest floor, allowing the water to soak into the ground, leaving the sediment behind. One of our primary objectives when dealing with road drainage is to reduce or eliminate fine sediment from entering the stream channel. And a particularly effective way to do that is to provide a buffer strip between the road and the stream. And that buffer strip can consist of grass or something considerably more dense like brush. What that does is it allows the velocity to drop enough that the fine sediment settles out before entering the stream channel. Settling ponds are another effective water control measure. They do just what their name implies. Interrupting and slowing down the water flow so that sediment can settle out rather than continue its journey to other parts of the forest. Of course, these man-made systems are only as good as their upkeep, but with regular care they function effectively as part of the forest defense against erosion and sedimentation caused by concentrated water flow. Of course, as we've seen, too little water is the other side of the problem when a road diverts water from its normal flow path and unnaturally concentrates it. The flow may erode the ground so deep that it's below the natural water table. This causes the water level to drop, killing shallow-rooted grasses and other vegetation. That can upset the natural balance between and within the forest's plant and animal species, ultimately leading to even more erosion and related changes to the forest. For example, if shallow-rooted grasses and other ground cover plants die off, they're no longer able to help hold the soil together and to slow and disperse concentrated water. When rain does come, it falls on soil that's much more susceptible to erosion. Of course, no matter how skillfully you maintain the roads, it just isn't possible to stop all erosion, but it is possible to minimize or modify even in extreme conditions. Here in the Sonoran Desert of the Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona, there's less than 12 inches of rainfall a year. Conducting necessary repairs on these roadways can seriously reduce their surface cohesiveness, if done without proper moisture content. Left untreated, the soil could soon be carried away by the wind and by whatever precipitation does occur. So in a place like this, during operations like blading, it's especially important to keep the proper moisture content in the road surface to allow proper shaping. This may mean mechanically spraying the road surface with water or scheduling road work soon after a rainfall. In any location, but especially a drive-in like this, compacting the road immediately following blading operations is essential to improving the soil's cohesiveness. In some situations, soil stabilizing additives may also be needed. Here, as in all forest service road maintenance, the new and improved rule of thumb is disturb the soil only when absolutely necessary, and when it is necessary, use a light touch. Does this roadside ditch need clearing and reshaping? Only if it's sending water back onto the road or otherwise functioning improperly. Experience and research have taught us that cleaner and clearer isn't always better when it comes to protecting forest soil. In fact, these rocks and plants are helping to slow the flow of water through the ditch and hold the soil together. In light of modern maintenance policies and practices, the presence of a road in a forest doesn't have to signal the presence of excessive erosion and its consequences, from stream sedimentation to possible slope failure. Peaceful coexistence between a road system and an ecosystem is nothing to take for granted. It demands a great deal of planning, care and skill, but it can be achieved. And the stakes couldn't be much higher, and surely the effort is worthwhile. National forest roads aren't just a means of accessing and managing resources, or getting from one place to another by way of the scenic route. Their condition directly impacts the health and longevity of a living treasure whose importance we're just beginning to fully understand. Whether or not forests like this one continue to thrive and prosper depends largely on how we do our jobs. For the men and women who work hands-on to maintain unpaved secondary roads, the task couldn't be more important or rewarding to truly make a difference in the natural world by helping to preserve and sustain our national heritage for generations to come.