Ah, the great outdoors.

My wife and I moved to Austin, Texas, at the end of August and now that the home is getting set up, and the weather is cooling down (it was 103 degF the day we arrived), we're getting out and around a bit more. Being from the NYC area I've also been impressed with the big open sky and how clean the air seems, when compared with large metropolitan areas. So this fascinating note about a bacterial census of Texas air in The Scientist really piqued my interest.

We all know that there are bacteria everywhere. Heck, we're even in a symbiotic relationship with many of them. But not all of them. And from The Scientist article we learn that there are "some 1,800 different bacterial species -- including relatives of bioterror pathogens -- in the skies above San Antonio and Austin, Texas, revealing a level of diversity approaching that found in soil." Who knew?

The work that yields these interesting (startling?) findings is part of a homeland security effort to "monitor the skies over urban areas for signs of bioterrorism." So here's a side effect of monitoring and surveillance that is not necessarily good news, but provides key data that we need to know in order to be attentive to our lived environments.

So the next time I breathe deeply of the great outdoors of Austin it will be a different experience.

Technorati Tags: Austin, data, environment, science