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How Scientists Responded to Cannibalism, and the Surprising Comeback of California’s Most Unwanted Crab

Friday, July 9th, 2021

by Marissa Sandoval

Young woman on dock holds up a green crab

Julie Gonzalez, a graduate student at the University of California, Davis, holds up an invasive European green crab. (Credit: SERC)

In an artificially created estuary near San Francisco Bay, called Seadrift Lagoon, a very real problem arose when European green crabs (Carcinus maenas) arrived in the 1990s. After taking up residency, the invasive species population grew immensely as the crabs feasted on Dungeness crabs, clams, and oysters—a grim problem for the native animals and migratory shorebirds that rely on them.

The stark situation demanded major intervention. In 2009, researchers from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC)’s Marine Invasions Lab, the University of California, Davis, and Portland State University partnered to eradicate the local European crab population through intensive trapping.

But their efforts accidentally led to even more green crabs. Now, over a decade later, the teams who addressed the problem head-on have published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on what they learned from a conservation effort gone awry. Led by Ted Grosholz of the University of California, Davis, the new study advocates for major caution when working with invasive species whose life history is similar to European green crabs. Click to continue »

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How the “Blue Methane” Team Used COVID Restrictions To Get More Data Than Ever

Thursday, April 15th, 2021

by Kristen Minogue

Three scientists in masks taking measurements in a wetland

Erika Koontz (right) pauses for a selfie with Shelby Cross (left) and Kyle Derby (center) while doing methane sampling in Maryland’s Jug Bay, one of the few sites she could visit in-person during the pandemic. (Credit: Erika Koontz)

This article is part of a series of posts highlighting research the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center is continuing to do amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and adaptations its staff have been making in a more socially distant world.

Like many scientists, Erika Koontz was hired for a specific project. She had just begun a job as a technician with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Biogeochemistry Lab. Her new supervisor, James Holmquist, had an ambitious goal in mind: Uncover how wetlands across the U.S. store—or emit—the powerful greenhouse gas methane. They called it the Blue Methane project.

“It’s a dataset that’s really never been attempted before, to be housed under one single project,” Koontz said. During field season, Koontz would visit wetlands on the East, West and Gulf Coasts, sampling methane in their porewater and measuring the flux of methane into and out of their soils.

Koontz started her job in March 2020. Enough said on that subject.

The next six months were some of the busiest of her life.

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Seagrass Restoration Brings New Life To Virginia’s Once-Forsaken Bays

Tuesday, December 15th, 2020

by Kristen Minogue

Two decades ago, it was almost impossible to find eelgrass in Virginia’s South Bay—or many of the other small bays behind the barrier islands along the state’s eastern shore. After a barrage of disease followed by a powerful hurricane wiped them out by 1933, many thought the eelgrasses would never return. With the eelgrass went the brant goose, a popular waterfowl for sport hunting, and a lucrative bay scallop industry that had brought in millions of dollars per year.

“Because the bay scallop relies on the eelgrass as it’s growing up, it just completely disappeared and never came back,” said Jonathan Lefcheck, a marine biologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.

Today, a 20-year restoration has transformed South Bay and its neighboring bays into an oasis. But for the scientists leading the effort, restoring the eelgrass wasn’t enough. They wanted to find out if all the benefits eelgrasses provide would return as well. A new Science Advances report finally gave them their answer.
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Plastic Cleanup Expedition Helps Research Stay Afloat During Pandemic

Friday, September 4th, 2020

by Isabella Eclipse

Yellow buoy floating in water, with bottom covered in barnacles and a diver taking photos behind it.

Plastic buoy in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, colonized by gooseneck barnacles and crabs. (Credit: Justin Hofman/Greenpeace)

This article is part of a series of posts highlighting research the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center is continuing to do amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and adaptations its staff have been making in a more socially distant world.

In nature, adaptation is key to survival. This year more than ever, being adaptable and resilient has also been essential to working as a scientist. Faced with a pandemic, researchers around the world have had to find creative ways to continue their work.

SERC postdoc Linsey Haram is part of the FloatEco Project, a research collaboration that studies artificial ecosystems made of floating ocean plastic. By hitchhiking on pieces of plastic, coastal organisms can drift into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and survive in the middle of the ocean.

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The Hunt for Historic Graves

Friday, August 28th, 2020

by Kristen Minogue

Author’s Note: SERC is keenly interested in finding more descendants of the Sellmans, Contees, enslaved Black families, tenant farmers and others who lived and worked on what is now the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. If you wish to be part of documenting our shared history, please send information to Kristen Minogue at minoguek@si.edu.

Split gray tombstone amid forest understory, speckled with shadows of the forest canopy

The tombstone of Thomas Francis from 1685, now split in two. (Credit: Christine Dunham)

On March 19, 1685, a major named Thomas Francis took his wife on a boating trip to visit their neighbors across the Rhode River, at a plantation called Tulip Hill in southern Maryland. He never returned. Francis drowned in a boating accident on the way back, at the young age of 42.

His tombstone bore a poetic inscription urging his family not to mourn, but to hope for a reunion after death. One snippet read: “For tho grim death thought fitt to part us here/Rejoyce & think that wee shall once appeare/At that great day when all shall Summond be.”

Fast forward to the 1850s. The field where Thomas Francis lies buried now sits near the intersection of two plantations belonging to the Contee and Sellman families. Both families rely heavily on enslaved Black families to grow wheat, corn and tobacco. Like many wealthy plantation owners, the Sellmans bury their dead in a family cemetery near the house.

Dozens of people lived, toiled and died on the land that today forms the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). But much remains unknown about their burials. SERC staff knew that Thomas Francis’ tombstone—reportedly the oldest in Maryland’s Anne Arundel County—was on SERC property, but at least a decade had passed since anyone had seen it. Three gravestones once inside the Sellman family cemetery now sit in the nearby All Hallows Church. While small footstones and brick pavers still mark the original graves, SERC staff didn’t know how many other Sellmans lay under the site. There are rumors, but no definitive records, of where the enslaved people had their final resting place.

Today, a team of archaeologists, historians, citizen scientists and cadaver dogs is on the brink of solving the mystery.
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Volunteer Spotlight: Student Activist Kallan Benson on Standing Up for Climate Change

Tuesday, April 14th, 2020

by Kristen Minogue

Teenage girl in blue tie-dye shirt sitting on a bench holding a golden retriever. Posters behind her read "Stop playing with our future" and "Fridays for Future" in rainbow marker.

Kallan Benson with her family’s golden retriever, Osage. The dog is their unofficial “Climate Anxiety Therapy.” (Credit: Carl Benson)

It would be tempting say Kallan Benson isn’t your typical teenage student. Homeschooled since preschool age, she has plenty of memories of doing homeschool programs at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center with her younger brother, Reese.

“We made toothpaste one time,” she recalled. “Reese’s group, him and two of our other friends, their strategy was just put everything in….Every flavor, they just put it all in. No one wanted to taste it.”

But as an organizer for the grassroots climate group Fridays For Future, Kallan is one of thousands. Possibly even tens of thousands. The tidal wave of students striking to demand climate action is gaining momentum, and Benson is among those leading the charge. Click to continue »

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Christine Arena: Determined Optimism and Letting Science Speak

Tuesday, April 14th, 2020
head and shoulders picture of young woman with brown hair, in a black jacket and white blouse

Filmmaker and science communicator Christine Arena (Photo courtesy of Christine Arena)

A communicator with a passion for environmental and social issues, Christina Arena left her mark on the environmental film world with the 2018 series Let Science Speak. The short documentary videos go beyond the “war on science” headlines to humanize scientists and let them tell their own stories. Today, she’s donating her time and talent to help produce videos for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). Her newest short film will premiere this April at the Smithsonian’s digital Earth Optimism Summit April 22-24. In this Q&A, she talks about what gives her purpose and optimism. Click to continue »

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How To Throw An (Almost) Zero-Waste Music Festival

Thursday, November 21st, 2019
African-American choir singing underneath a tent outside

A capella group Washington Revels Jubilee Voices, at the Chesapeake Music Festival.
(Credit: Kristen Minogue/SERC)

by Sarah Wade

This article originally appeared in the November issue of the Smithsonian’s Sustainability Matters newsletter.

One small bag that could fit into an office-sized trash can. That’s all the waste that remained after a concert with more than 300 attendees, over 50 staff and volunteers, eight performing groups and four food vendors. Surrounding it, eight recycling containers and four composting bins waited for pickup. By and large, the first Chesapeake Music Festival achieved its goal of near-zero waste, to the exhausted but happy relief of its organizers.

Months of effort went into that lone trash bag: working with vendors, buying supplies, and encouraging the public to bring their own water bottles to cut down on single-use plastics.

Part of the Smithsonian Year of Music, the Chesapeake Music Festival on Sept. 14 included performances from Don Shapelle, Jeff Holland and That West River Band, Washington Revels Jubilee Voices and other folk singers from around the Bay. But when the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and the Arundel Rivers Federation teamed up to hold it, they had an even loftier target: make it zero waste. Click to continue »

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Invader ID Volunteers Are Deploying Tiles in Chesapeake Bay

Monday, June 3rd, 2019

By Stephanie Fox

Each year, thousands of invasive organisms cling to the bottoms of boats, traveling hundreds of miles to distant bays. It’s proven difficult and time consuming for scientists to investigate all the harbors being invaded. So researchers at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) are looking to citizen scientists for help.

Over the last year, volunteers assisted from the comfort of their homes, helping identify invasive species using images online. But this summer, a small group of Invader ID volunteers will get their hands dirty doing experiments of their own in the Chesapeake Bay. Click to continue »

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Volunteer Spotlight: Sarah Grady, Explorer of Past & Future Landscapes

Thursday, April 4th, 2019

by Sara Richmond

Sarah Grady standing by large seive

Sarah Grady and other archaeology volunteers use this large wooden sieve to sift through soil in search of artifacts. (Photo: Sara Richmond)

In 2012, Sarah Grady was waiting tables at the Old Stein Inn and deciding what to do with her new anthropology degree when a restaurant customer told her about the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Archaeology Lab, located just a few miles from the restaurant. Soon after she became the lab’s second volunteer, working with volunteer lab director Jim Gibb to excavate plots and crunch data. Six and a half years later, Sarah is the lab’s assistant director. The year-round program has grown from just her and Jim to a group of roughly a dozen citizen scientist volunteers who gather every Wednesday to dig and learn about each other’s projects.

The Archaeology Lab is the only all-volunteer lab at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). Currently the lab hosts 16 ongoing projects, all of which citizen science volunteers have undertaken on their own.

“We guide them,” says Sarah, “but most of them have taken the research into their own hands and are even making appointments with other scientists to discuss.” Click to continue »

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