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As Sea Level Rises, Wetlands Crank Up Their Carbon Storage

Wednesday, March 6th, 2019

by Kristen Minogue

River surrounded by wetland on both sides.

Coastal wetlands like this one in Maryland store carbon more efficiently than any other natural ecosystem, and a new study shows they store even more when sea level rises. (Gary Peresta/SERC)

Some wetlands perform better under pressure. A new study revealed that when faced with sea-level rise, coastal wetlands respond by burying even more carbon in their soils.

Coastal wetlands—which include marshes, mangroves and seagrasses—already store carbon more efficiently than any other natural ecosystem, including forests. The latest study, published March 7 in the journal Nature, looked at how coastal wetlands worldwide react to rising seas and discovered they can rise to the occasion, offering additional protection against climate change. Click to continue »

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These Creatures Crossed the Pacific on Plastic Tsunami Debris. Now, a New Struggle for Survival.

Tuesday, January 29th, 2019

by Kristen Minogue

Black mussels, pink barnacles and other sea creatures on buoy
Mediterranean mussels, acorn barnacles and anemones crossed the Pacific on this buoy found in Long Beach, Washington, in February 2017. (Photo: Nancy Treneman)

On March 11, 2011, a 125-foot tsunami struck Japan’s Tōhoku coast, triggered by a massive earthquake just hours earlier. The cost in human life and property damage was devastating. When it receded, it set in motion another chain of events—one scientists are still watching unfold eight years later. It’s a story of millions of pieces of plastic that journeyed across the ocean, and the plants and animals that rafted with them.

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Finding America’s Most Secretive Owls

Friday, December 21st, 2018

by Kristen Minogue

Small saw-whet owl in someone's hand, with its eyes closed

Northern saw-whet owls are the smallest owls in eastern North America. Because of their secretive natures, for a long time scientists didn’t even know they migrated. Project Owlnet is changing that. (Credit: Carl Benson)

Melissa Acuti is a chronic gambler. But the wagers she makes don’t involve casinos, poker chips, slot machines or even money. Instead, she’s willing to sacrifice hours of sleep checking nearly invisible mist nets in the forest. The prize: A tiny saw-whet owl, the smallest (and arguably cutest) owl in eastern North America.

“Everybody has that—playing the lottery, Bingo, that little, ‘I might win,'” Acuti said one frigid November evening in 2017. “This is my ‘I might win,’ when I catch an owl.”

By day, Acuti works for the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. But for four to six weeks in October and November, when saw-whet owls begin their migrations, she stays up until midnight or later to band them. It’s part of a continent-wide effort called Project Owlnet, in which scientists attach tiny bracelets to the owls’ feet to track their journeys. For the last two years, Acuti has run a Project Owlnet station at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Edgewater, Maryland, and convinced dozens of citizen scientists to join her.

“Just the anticipation of what you might find is very exciting,” said Lenore Naranjo, who joined Acuti for six nights this year with her husband, Ralph. “And the camaraderie of everybody waiting and tromping out together to look and check.” Click to continue »

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Posted in Ecology, Participatory Science, Programs, SERC Sites and Scenes, Volunteers | 1 Response »

Q&A: Jon Lefcheck, MarineGEO Pioneer

Monday, November 26th, 2018

by Kristen Minogue

Two men sitting on couch with mugs.
Jon Lefcheck (right) at Swansea University in Wales with colleague John Griffin. Lefcheck taught a course on mathematical modeling in Wales in 2017. (Photo courtesy of Jon Lefcheck)

Jon Lefcheck has spent most of his life on the East Coast. But as the new coordinating scientist for the Marine Global Earth Observatories (MarineGEO), he’s about to get a crash course in doing marine biology on the other side of the country and the other side of the globe. In this Q&A, learn about some of the weird discoveries and creatures he’s encountered so far, and why the coasts make society tick. Edited for brevity and clarity.

You were the first person in your family to go to college. What motivated you to push yourself in that way?

I always liked school—oddly enough, yeah, I know. I liked science. I pushed my parents to send me to private high school so that I could get more into my studies, and they were hugely supportive the entire way. I think that was their dream, that they would have a kid that would grow up to go on to college. My father said he wanted me to be a doctor when I was born. He meant medical doctor, so I’m not sure how he feels. But, you know, Ph.D.

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8 Ways Nature Can Help Us Conquer
Climate Change

Thursday, November 15th, 2018

by Kristen Minogue

The United States may be officially pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement, but scientists are still brainstorming ways the country could meet its original goals. Mother Nature can lend a far more powerful hand than we thought, if given the chance.

Led by The Nature Conservancy, a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and other organizations looked at 21 “natural climate solutions,” like restoring forests and wetlands or planting cover crops. According to the report published Wednesday in Science Advances, these tactics could knock an estimated 1.2 trillion kilograms off the U.S.’s yearly carbon emissions—just enough to hit the country’s 2025 targets for the Paris agreement. And they come with a range of side benefits, including increased yields for farmers and decreased risks of catastrophic wildfires.

But to work, they would also require a serious rethinking of how our society values carbon. Today, saving 1,000 kg of carbon is worth about $10. To provide enough incentive to make these solutions widespread, the authors estimated those credits would need to go for at least $100 per 1,000 kg.

We’ve highlighted eight of these solutions below, but you can read about all 21 in the full report.

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Climate Change

eDNA emerges as powerful tool for tracking threatened river herring in Chesapeake Bay

Thursday, November 1st, 2018

Article contributed by the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

Using environmental DNA (eDNA) to track the presence of fish in waterways is emerging as a powerful tool to detect and understand the abundance of species in aquatic environments. However, relatively few studies have compared the performance of this emerging technology to traditional catch or survey approaches in the field.

Researchers from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science and Smithsonian Environmental Research Center field tested using eDNA—tracking the presence of fish by identifying DNA that has been left behind in the water—to detect river herring in tributaries of Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. They found that tracking and quantifying herring DNA from the environment corresponded well to more traditional field methods and has great potential to assist future monitoring efforts of river herring abundance and habitat use.

“Sampling a single river, you need a net, crew, permits, it can be expensive,” said study author Louis Plough of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science. “The eDNA approach is an alternative where you just take water and you get an idea of the abundance of fish.” Click to continue »

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Student Spotlight: Not Your Average High School Science Experiment

Monday, October 29th, 2018

by Anika Mittu, student contributor

Girl giving two thumbs up in front of an orchid poster.

High school sophomore Nia Zagami and her classmates collected data on conserving threatened pink pink orchids, which brought her in front of an audience of scientists at the Native Orchid Conference this year. (Credit: Tony Zagami)

While preparing two students to speak at the 2018 Native Orchid Conference held at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center this summer, citizen science coordinator Alison Cawood assured them that their presentation on pine pink orchids would be low stress.

Sitting in the back of the conference room and smoothing over their dresses, the students felt otherwise.

“I feared that I would not be smart enough to share the data, and that I would mess up or look clueless,” said Nia Zagami, a sophomore at Sherwood High School and presenter at the conference. “Knowing that I was just a high schooler who was expected to speak in front of scientists and orchid enthusiasts really made me nervous.”

The nerves didn’t fade until Zagami, joined by fellow Sherwood sophomore and presentation collaborator Sudha Sudhaker, walked to the front of the conference room and adjusted her microphone multiple times. And then, the pair eased into their normal student voices to explain their own data and what citizen science means to them. An audience of blank stares began grinning.

Zagami and Sudhaker had recently finished their second semester of Honors Biology under teacher Laura Dinerman. Although Honors Biology is a common science course for underclassmen at Sherwood, Dinerman’s 60 students taking the course during spring 2018 did something decidedly less common: a professional conservation experiment. Dinerman’s class measured the growth of the pine pink orchid (Bletia purpurea). Though common in the tropics, in the continental U.S. the pine pink orchid grows only in Florida, where it’s threatened. The students grew the orchids under different soil nutrient conditions (fungi, fertilizer or unchanged soil) in their classroom, as part of a citizen science project led by the Smithsonian.

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Bio Blitz! Critters of the Eastern Shore

Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018

by Carmen Ritter, SERC Fish & Invertebrate Ecology Lab intern

Picture that tiny town that one friend always tells you they’re from, with the single post office and the neighbors that know every detail of your personal life. Now picture that, on the water, even smaller. Welcome to Wachapreague, Virginia.

Wachapreague sits on the Eastern Shore of Virginia and claims to be “The Flounder Capital of the World.” The locals are some of the friendliest people you could find, and nearly everyone in the area fishes. I wasn’t there for recreational purposes, though.

This summer, I visited the Virginia Institute of Marine Science Eastern Shore Lab (VIMS ESL) with about 20 scientists from around the country to conduct a bio blitz documenting the biodiversity of Chesapeake Bay. The blitz was organized by the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and MarineGEO (the Marine Global Earth Observatory). While most scientists were from the Smithsonian and other research institutions surrounding the Chesapeake Bay, some flew in from Florida, Washington State or Puerto Rico. After gathering for a meeting on the first evening, we all prepared the lab space for samples and headed to bed. The blitz officially started first thing Monday morning.

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War of the Periwinkles

Tuesday, October 9th, 2018

by Philip Kiefer

There’s a war of attrition playing out on the coastlines of the San Francisco Bay that is in a ponderous class of its own. A tiny snail, called a rough periwinkle (Littorina saxatilis), might be pushing its native counterpart, the checkered periwinkle (Littorina scutulata), from the beaches it once called home. But no one is quite sure why, or even how quickly it’s spreading.

Someone looking down at a handful of snails, on a beach.

Adrielle Cailipan examines a handful of invasive periwinkles. (Philip Kiefer/SERC)

Adrielle Cailipan, a recent graduate of San Francisco State University, is spending her summer internship in the world of periwinkles with the West Coast Lab of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). She’s working not only to document the spread of the rough periwinkle, but also to understand what makes the invader so successful.

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Invasive Plants Can Boost Blue Carbon Storage

Monday, October 1st, 2018

by Kristen Minogue

Green marsh banks alongside river on a cloudy day

Some invasive plants like Phragmites australis, the light-brown stalks on this Maryland marsh, could more than double the ability of marshes and other coastal ecosystems to store blue carbon. (Credit: Gary Peresta/SERC)

When invasive species enter the picture, things are rarely black and white. A new paper has revealed that some plant invaders could help fight climate change by making it easier for ecosystems to store “blue carbon”—the carbon stored in coastal environments like salt marshes, mangroves and seagrasses. But other invaders, most notably animals, can do the exact opposite.

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