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Mangrove Tracking IV: Brush with Manatees

Tuesday, June 26th, 2012

by Dan Gruner

A manatee samples red mangrove leaves and its cigar-shaped propagules. Photo: John Parker

Our task this week was to begin “ground-truthing” locations on the map to evaluate them for suitability as field study sites. This was basic reconnaissance, otherwise known as exploring (or just mucking about). It’s always exciting to visit new sites. For me, recon missions recall childhood Christmas mornings, with the anticipation of finding treasure in the stacks of wrapped boxes under the tree. What treasure will we find in the marshes and mangroves?

Even with the tremendous leaps we’ve gained from satellite imaging, Google Earth and other technologies, experience on the ground (or in the water) is irreplaceable. Our team must build a network of sites along the lagoons and estuaries of the Florida coast, and ultimately the globe, to understand the causes and consequences of shifts in the range of tropical mangrove species. On this day we probed several mangrove and salt marsh estuaries along the Indian River Lagoon. We tested technologies allowing real-time exploration of satellite imagery while comparing that imagery to landscape and vegetation features we saw on the ground. This was GPS on steroids! By allowing us to optimize site selection and replicate sites all along the coast, these technologies will help us characterize the vegetation of the estuaries and how they’ve changed over time.

But that day our attention was drawn away from new technology to something much older (about 50 million years old): manatees. Click to continue »

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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Mangrove Tracking: Letters from the Field | 1 Response »

Mangrove Tracking III: The Glories of Field Work

Friday, June 22nd, 2012

Mangrove research is not glamorous work.

Researchers Lorae Simpson, Jake Bodart, Nancy Shipley and Mayda Nathan ford across a mangrove-surrounded pool. (Brian Thompson)


Don’t let the tropical locales and boat-to-work daily routine fool you; research in mangroves requires high tolerance for heat, biting bugs, dirt and wet. But the impenetrability of mangroves means that scientific understanding of this ecosystem has lagged somewhat behind other terrestrial environments. And this lack of information is like a magnet for ecologists.

Our team has descended on the Florida mangroves this summer to study the insects that live in and on them, the fish that find shelter among their submerged roots, the dietary choices of the crabs that live in their branches, their reproductive biology, and the interactions between the three mangrove species found here and their marsh plant neighbors. Taken together, our efforts will contribute to a better understanding of the communities that assemble as mangroves spread north into the northern Florida saltmarshes.

This means we spend some days struggling through thickets of mangroves, waist-high patches of pickleweed, and neck-deep pools of brackish water. In building up a research program, we’re building a lot of character, too.

More stories from the mangroves >>

-Mayda Nathan, graduate student (University of Maryland)

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant Number 1065098. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

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Mangrove Tracking II: Invasive Lionfish

Monday, June 18th, 2012

by Cora Johnston

Red Lionfish. Photo: Jacek Madejski

This just in: Invasive and venomous lionfish (Pterois volitans) have just been spotted in mangroves along Florida’s Atlantic coast! We encountered two individuals of this invasive species (they’re native to the Indian and Pacific Oceans) while conducting snorkeling fish surveys along the Indian River Lagoon.

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Aging Forests Better at Trapping Carbon

Friday, June 8th, 2012

by Kristen Minogue

Mysterious things happen to forests as they grow old. The passing of time alters the trees, the animals, the microbes, even how much they breathe.

Hemlock tree in Salt Springs State Park, Penn. Hemlocks are one of the last trees to populate a forest, and those forests seem to be better at storing carbon. (Nicholas_T)


Just like people, forests age. Dense rows of birch and cherry trees give way to tulip poplars. Eventually the tulip poplars vanish and more spacious oaks and hemlocks rise up in their place. But arguably the most important changes occur underground. The planet’s soils store more than three times as much carbon as the atmosphere. And—while researchers still aren’t sure exactly why—older forests seem to be better at holding onto it.

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Mangrove Tracking I: A Forest on the Move

Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

by Dan Gruner

Black mangrove. Mangroves like this tolerate hot, salty environments partly by exuding excess salt onto their leaves. (John Parker)

Will tropical mangroves take over the world?

I don’t think anyone believes that will happen. However, it does seem that mangroves are moving up in latitude, encroaching into more temperate salt marsh systems dominated by cord grass and other herbaceous species. Although mangrove systems are in steep decline worldwide because of coastal development, aquaculture and other human activities, climate change and other factors may be increasing their total geographic range.

Why would this happen? What would this mean for coastal ecosystems in the USA and globally? And what would it mean for the billions of people who live within 20 miles of a coastal zone, or the billions more who rely on some form of oceanic protein?

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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Invasive Species, Mangrove Tracking: Letters from the Field | 4 Responses »

The Underwater War on Climate Change

Monday, May 7th, 2012

by Kristen Minogue

The milky blue waters of this Iceland lagoon are teeming with cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae. (Marie-II)

Beneath the surface of the ocean, an invisible army of workers is fighting to keep climate change in check. Many have been silently absorbing or burying carbon for billions of years, and humanity has just begun to take notice of them. These unassuming laborers are bacteria.

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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology | 1 Response »

Snowmageddon vs. Caribbean Creep

Monday, January 9th, 2012

by Monaca Noble

SERC's Green Village during Snowmageddon February 2010 (Stephen Sanford)

Remember Snowmageddon 2010, the east coast storms that dumped up to three feet of snow over the mid-Atlantic? The February snowstorm was the largest in the region in nearly 90 years, resulting in the heaviest snowfall on record for Delaware (26.5 inches) and the third heaviest snowfall in Baltimore (24.8 inches). The storm made a big impression on Dr. João Canning-Clode and other scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, who began to wonder if the storm, and the December/January cold snap that preceded it, would lead to the deaths and potential disappearance of marine invaders from southern climates.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Extreme Weather, Invasive Species, Publications | 1 Response »

Hurricanes, Snakeheads and Dead Zones: What 2011 Weather Meant for the Chesapeake

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Credit: NOAA Photo Library

Let’s face it, the East Coast has had an incredibly bizarre year. In 2011 so far, we’ve seen the coldest January on record, the hottest month on record (July), a hurricane, a tropical storm and an earthquake (we’re not even going to touch the last one – we’ll leave that to our colleagues at Natural History). And to top it off, August and September drenched us with uncharacteristically high rainfall. While SERC tends to focus on the long-term picture rather than brief snapshots, this year has prompted more than a few raised eyebrows among our scientists. What does it mean for the environment? What does it mean for Chesapeake Bay? And can any of it be linked to climate change?

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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Extreme Weather, Invasive Species, Publications, Water Quality | 3 Responses »

Marshes, Microbes and the Other Blue Carbon

Tuesday, September 6th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Tidal 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.

tidal wetland

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)

Scientists estimate wetlands are responsible for anywhere from 15 to 45 percent of all methane emissions – a wide range that makes predicting their role in climate change difficult. However, that role could prove critical in the years to come. Methane (CH4) is a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Over the course of a century, a single gram of methane is roughly 25 times more powerful than a gram of CO2.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Interns, Publications | 2 Responses »

Grimy field work? Give it to the tourists.

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011

by Kristen Minogue

Ali Kishwar, a volunteer tourist from Pakistan, navigates the muddy terrain across from SERC’s beaver pond with caution. (Credit: SERC)

For most people, summer vacation means stretching out on a beach in the South Pacific, touring the ruins of ancient Greece, or (for the more outdoors-inclined) hiking the Inca Trail in Peru. It does not usually entail wading through ankle-deep mud to measure the diameters of trees.

Paul Smith, a 63-year-old retired engineer, travelled to SERC all the way from the United Kingdom to do it. So did Ali Kishwar, a Pakistani doctorate student who took a break from studying medicinal plants at the University of Reading in Berkshire, also in the U.K. Smith and Kishwar joined a motley group of seven citizen scientists who paid to spend a week at SERC doing field work.
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Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Publications, SERC Sites and Scenes | Comments Off on Grimy field work? Give it to the tourists.

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