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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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Because of Her Story: Jane Lubchenco, Voice for the Ocean

Thursday, October 3rd, 2019
Woman in life preserver in front of iceberg

Jane Lubchenco in the Arctic. (Credit: NOAA)

by Kristen Minogue

This October, you’re invited to meet a woman who has spent decades working to save the ocean. The journey has taken her from the coasts of Oregon to Panama, New Zealand, South Africa and the Seychelles. Her name is Jane Lubchenco. In 2009, she broke ground as the first woman to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). But her history with the ocean began long before that.

She’ll speak in person about the future of our global ocean on the evening of Oct. 15, as part of the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative and the finale for the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s 2019 evening lectures. The full details are here. (Spoiler: It’s free.) But if you’d like a preview, here are a few snapshots from Lubchenco’s life, and her unconventional path to become one the most powerful people speaking up for the seas: Click to continue »

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High School Students Program Robot to Help Environmental Literacy

Monday, May 6th, 2019

by Stephanie Fox

Standing in a nearly empty classroom, three students crowded around a massive cardboard box, removing padding and clearing the way for the robot inside. Within minutes, they had extracted and turned on the robot, whose abilities they will test and manipulate this spring.

A high school boy examines a white robot

Joe Lewis turns Pepper on for the first time since removing it from the box. (Stephanie Fox/Northwestern University)

South River High School juniors John Hair, Jacob Haley and Joe Lewis partnered with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) to develop a program for the robot that improves environmental literacy.

The robot they’re programming is just one of 12 “Pepper” robots SoftBank Robotics donated to the Smithsonian in February 2018.

“It was a pilot project trying to see if these Pepper robots could be used in an educational museum or research setting,” said Cosette Larash, a public engagement program assistant at SERC. Click to continue »

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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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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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Bering Sea Days: Teaching Science
on the Last Frontier

Tuesday, December 5th, 2017

by Linda McCann, SERC biologist

The teachers on Alaska’s Pribilof Islands have a tradition. Every year for the last decade, they have invited scientists, educators and innovators from across the U.S. to take over their school for a week. The festival is known as Bering Sea Days. This year, marine biologist Linda McCann of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center joined a team of 22 scientists and educators, leading games and activities to teach the community about the research being done on the unique animals and environment of the Bering Sea. Read the first-hand narrative below for a glimpse inside this remote Alaskan community.

Hiking through grassland

Students and educators hike through the rugged landscape of Alaska’s St. Paul Island. (Credit: Linda McCann)

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on the Last Frontier

Time Lords and Ladies of History’s Trash

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2016

by Emily Li

Digging through soil plot

Citizen scientist Linda Perkins helps excavate a soil plot in front of the Contee mansion ruins. (Photo: SERC)

People don’t usually think of archaeologists as dumpster divers. Then again, sifting through trash for hidden treasures is exactly what the volunteer citizen scientists of the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) Archaeology Lab do every Wednesday. But they don’t scavenge anything for themselves. (The market for millenia-old oyster shells is very unpredictable, and any food they find is always up to three centuries past its expiration date.) Instead, they take away new skills and a chance to put together a historical puzzle larger than themselves.

“We look back thousands of years,” said Jim Gibb, the lead volunteer and coordinator of the lab. “I always tell people—we’re the time lords.”  Click to continue »

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Westward, Ho! MarineGEO Enters The Pacific

Wednesday, November 16th, 2016

by Kristen Minogue

Hakai scientists selfie on boat

Margot Hessing-Lewis and the Nearshore Tech Team of the Hakai Institute, British Columbia, one of the newest MarineGEO sites on the Pacific. (Photo: Margot Hessing-Lewis,  Hakai Insititute)

Imagine gazing into the ocean off Maryland knowing what life is under the waves, what’s driving the food web, and how healthy the water is. Then, imagine being able to discover the same thing for another coast halfway around the world. That vision—of a network vast enough to take the pulse of coastal waters worldwide—began becoming a reality at the Smithsonian in 2012. It’s called the Marine Global Earth Observatory, or MarineGEO.

Back in 2012, it had only four sites, known as the “Tennenbaum Marine Observatories Network” after Michael and Suzanne Tennenbaum, whose donation jumpstarted the network. Those original four were all on the Atlantic: The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Chesapeake Bay, the Smithsonian Marine Station in Florida, Carrie Bow Cay in Belize, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Today, MarineGEO has nine sites, with three on the Pacific and memoranda of understanding for sites at Texas A&M University and the University of Hong Kong. And there is one more Pacific site still to come.

“The MarineGEO aspiration has always been to extend around the world … The ocean is connected everywhere,” said Emmett Duffy, MarineGEO’s director based out of SERC. Click to continue »

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Q&A: Saving the City With Urban Ecology

Thursday, October 20th, 2016

by Kristen Minogue

Painting of adults and children on a brick wall in Baltimore.

Community mural in a Baltimore neighborhood. (BES-LTER)

Preserving the environment is often seen as a battle of development versus nature. But in America today, roughly three-fourths of us live in metropolitan areas. To preserve our health and the planet’s health, we need to create something new: A sustainable city.

Enter urban ecology. Plant ecologist Steward Pickett of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies has been exploring the ecology of cities—hot spots where society, culture, economics and the environment collide—for more than two decades. In 1997, he and a handful of colleagues started the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, a long-term project that now involves more than 100 people. Pickett talks about some of their surprising discoveries in this edited Q&A.  To learn more, you can meet him in person on Tuesday, Nov. 15, at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s keynote evening lecture.

*Note: Edited for brevity and clarity

Steward Pickett with camera

Steward Pickett (Xiaofang Hu)

How strange was the idea of “urban ecology” when you began?

It was sort of a marginal pursuit. Most ecologists in the United States preferred to think they were working in pristine areas, or at least in areas where the human hand was relatively light on the land… There was this deep, deep bias in ecology to not look at places where people were part of the system … Urban ecology is kind of a way to say, let’s recognize this and see what it’s doing.  Click to continue »

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Why volunteer: Shaping the Future as an Environmental Educator

Thursday, April 21st, 2016

by Jan Payne Wilson

Volunteers come in a great variety of ages, gender, talents and reasons for volunteering. Here’s my short story.

Growing up in Nature

I grew up in the Pacific Northwest and am of a generation that was lucky enough to be able to leave the house after school or on Saturday mornings to play outside for hours with the other neighborhood kids. We made hiding places in scotch broom thickets, climbed on fallen logs, wandered in the woods, had bracken fern spear fights and in the short, sweet summers spent time at a local beach on Puget Sound. It was idyllic, but at the time I took it all for granted.

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