Blue mussels (Credit: Meriseal)
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Toughest Shellfish in the Sea?
Posted by KristenM on January 24th, 2012Click to continue »
Snowmageddon vs. Caribbean Creep
Posted by KristenM on January 9th, 2012
SERC's Green Village during Snowmageddon February 2010 (Stephen Sanford)
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How Plants (Occasionally) Escape the Food Chain
Posted by KristenM on December 23rd, 2011
Leaf shredded by insects. Credit: Marina LaForgia
It’s a trick worthy of any spy thriller: to elude an enemy, hide among something it won’t notice. Or, to be extra safe, something it finds incredibly disgusting. It turns out the same strategy can work for plants that don’t want to get eaten. Sometimes.
For the last seven months, intern Marina LaForgia has kept tabs on tree saplings in more than a dozen different environments and watched the game of ecological survival play out. As she tracked their progress, she searched for an answer to a deceptively simple question: Is diversity good for plants? When it comes to the food chain, will hungry herbivores pass over tasty plants if they’re surrounded by less palatable ones?
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Small Lagoon Fights Off Occupation
Posted by KristenM on December 6th, 2011On a thin strip of land between Bolinas Lagoon and the Pacific Ocean lies the neighborhood of Seadrift, a community battling an invasion of crabs that have taken over their lagoon.
European green crab (BrentMWilson)
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Six Endangered Species of the Chesapeake
Posted by KristenM on November 23rd, 2011
Bat infected with deadly white-nose syndrome.
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
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Why We Like Science
Posted by KristenM on November 4th, 2011
Above: One perk of student research at SERC. Photo courtesy of the Phytoplankton Lab
It’s impossible to work here without some compulsion to understand the natural world – whether it’s colonial tunicates that bear a creepy resemblance to the Borg or endangered orchids that need microscopic fungi to survive. So when Smithsonian Magazine launched a “Why I Like Science” series on their blog Surprising Science, we took full advantage of the opportunity to share our enthusiasm. Here’s how four staff responded when asked why science is cool.
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Hurricanes, Snakeheads and Dead Zones: What 2011 Weather Meant for the Chesapeake
Posted by KristenM on October 5th, 2011
Credit: NOAA Photo Library
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How the West Was Won (Back)
Posted by KristenM on October 4th, 2011Over the last two years, more than 150 volunteers have been working to remove an invasive Asian kelp from marinas in San Francisco Bay.
Undaria pinnatifida, grown to maturity. (Credit: SERC)
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The Satellite That Could Save the Coasts
Posted by KristenM on September 16th, 2011On a hot afternoon in July, a team of researchers sailing down Chesapeake Bay stumbled across a cluster of striped bass floating in the water. About a dozen of the iridescent black and silver fish bobbed at the surface near the ship’s bow. All of them were dead.
Scientists prepare to measure how light interacts with particles in the Bay. Credit: Carlos DelCastillo
The fish kill came out of a low-oxygen zone near Annapolis, just one symptom of the Bay’s declining health. Overflows of nutrients from farms and cities have fueled massive growths of algae that cut off light and oxygen to the Bay’s lower levels.
“There was a very quiet moment between everybody on the boat,” recalled Vienna Saccomanno, one of the Smithsonian research interns aboard when it was discovered. “You kind of knew what everyone was thinking, feeling empowered to continue with this research and hopefully contribute to prevention of this in our water system.”
The scientists on board weren’t there simply to document the Bay’s many ailments, however. They had joined the 10-day cruise to pave the way for a much larger goal: a geostationary satellite that could provide constant, detailed coverage of coastal health.
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Marshes, Microbes and the Other Blue Carbon
Posted by KristenM on September 6th, 2011Tidal marshes have long been lauded as carbon sinks for their ability to pull CO2 from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil, what scientists have taken to calling “blue carbon.” But wetlands are also notorious methane emitters. Now ecologists suspect that only a select few wetland types can reliably act as sinks, and that number may shrink as sea levels rise.
The Kirkpatrick Marsh on SERC's campus in Edgewater, MD. Tidal wetlands both store and release greenhouse gases. Which will prevail as the planet warms is a question ecologists are still trying to answer. (Credit: Gary Peresta/SERC)
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