Shorelines: Life & Science at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center

Orchid Hybrids Offer Clues for Conservation

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on August 27th, 2020

Yellow orchid with dozens of tiny flowers along its stem

The hybrid orchid Platanthera canbyi forms when the White Fringed Bog Orchid crosses with the Crested Orange Bog Orchid. (Credit: Melissa McCormick)

by Aliya Uteuova

This article is part of a series of posts highlighting research the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) is continuing to do amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more about SERC’s work to conserve threatened and endangered orchids by visiting the North American Orchid Conservation Center website.

When it comes to orchids, delicate, rare flowers with striking colors and shapes might come to mind. But did you know orchids make up 10 percent of the world’s flower species? With roughly 30,000 known species, they grow on all continents but Antarctica, ranging from the tropics to north of the Arctic Circle.

Orchids grow on soil, on trees and even on rocks. And like so many plant species in the world, orchids are vulnerable to habitat loss. While they can grow wherever there are fungi, the key is to have the right fungi.

“While we tend to think of fungi as bad and associate them with fungal infections, here’s this beautiful plant that turned the tables around,” said Melissa McCormick, principal investigator at SERC’s Molecular Ecology Lab.
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Carbon Sensors in the Time of Coronavirus

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on August 21st, 2020

by Isabella Eclipse

Young man in mask on a green lawn next to solar panel

Marc Rosenfield sets up a carbon cycling sensor outside the U.S. Capitol Building. (Credit: Megan Wilkerson)

This is the second in 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.

When the pandemic hit, many scientists’ field sites closed down, bringing countless research projects to a screeching halt. Marc Rosenfield, a graduate student at George Washington University, found himself in this exact situation when the Virginia Coast Reserve shut its doors. An ecosystem ecologist, Rosenfield was studying the exchange of carbon between the land and the atmosphere. He’d planned to deploy carbon sensors to understand how carbon exchange differs when moving from marshes to surrounding forests.

Instead of giving up, Rosenfield switched gears and transformed his research into a citizen science project. He, along with his dedicated undergraduate assistant Leona Neftaliem, reached out to colleagues in Washington, D.C., to see if anyone would allow the setup of carbon sensors in their backyards. To his surprise, an overwhelming number said yes. Soon, strangers were asking him to set up sensors on their properties. Today, Rosenfield has 30 sensors in locations across D.C., from private backyards to the U.S. Botanic Garden. There’s even one at the famous 9:30 nightclub.

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Repurposing Nature To Restore The San Francisco Shoreline

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on August 14th, 2020

by Aliya Uteuova

Four scientists in face masks on a rocky shore, with their arms outstretched to show the distance between each other

Left to right: Jeff Blumenthal, Acy Wood, Chela Zabin and Corryn Knapp do field work in Point Orient, a study site southwest from the team’s main living shorelines restoration site, Giant Marsh. (Credit: Ted Grosholz)

This is the first in 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.

Along the outer coast of San Francisco Bay, rocky, wave-crashing coastline gives way to acres of reefs. As the tides retreat, castle-like formations made of sand, oyster shells and cement reveal a living shoreline.

Since 2012, the San Francisco Bay Living Shorelines Project has used a nature-based approach to reinforce the shoreline and minimize coastal erosion while restoring critical eelgrass, Olympia oysters, and tidal marsh plant habitats. As a California State Coastal Conservancy public works project, it also falls under “critical infrastructure.” This meant scientists could still do socially distant fieldwork amidst the global pandemic.

“The shoreline protection might not seem too critical in 2020, but will be critical in 2050,” said Jeff Blumenthal, a technician with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s San Francisco branch, or “SERC-West.”

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U.N. Report Puts Spotlight on Seagrasses

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on July 31st, 2020

by Isabella Eclipse

Video created by United Nations Environment Programme

Appearances can be deceiving. At first glance, the humble seagrass meadow resembles a weedy underwater lawn. A closer look reveals one of the most important—and threatened—marine ecosystems in the world. Unfortunately, conservation efforts have often overlooked seagrass habitats.

“For a long time, people saw seagrass as a nuisance,” explained Jonathan Lefcheck, a biologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. It had a reputation for clogging boat propellers and washing up on beaches. “Tropical resorts would hire people to dig up seagrass in front of their beach because people would complain,” he added.

Though public perceptions have been changing, many people today are still unaware that seagrass meadows are rich and vibrant ecosystems like coral reefs or rainforests. A new report from the United Nations Environment Programme hopes to change that. Released June 8 on World Oceans Day, Out of the Blue compiles the latest findings from around the world on seagrasses and the valuable services they provide. SERC biologist Emmett Duffy served on the steering committee and helped synthesize the report.

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Who’s Left Swimming in Chicken Manure…and Its Bacteria?

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on June 19th, 2020

New study finds antibiotics from poultry farms can lead to drug-resistant bacteria in the water

by Kristen Minogue

Chickens stand in a Pennsylvania poultry barn. Crowded conditions in poultry barns increase the danger of a disease spreading through the flock, leading many poultry farmers to rely on antibiotics. (Credit: Steve Droter/Chesapeake Bay Program. Creative Commons License)

90 tons. That’s how much chicken manure—mixed with feathers, uneaten feed and leftover bedding—a Maryland poultry farmer scrapes out of a single barn each year.

Manure is just one of many issues poultry farmers on the Delmarva peninsula have to wrestle with. Poultry farming isn’t an easy industry, for the chickens or the farmers. To get started, a farmer generally needs to borrow hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a poultry barn to house roughly 45,000 birds. Companies like Purdue and Tyson supply the chicks, and pay the farmers based on how many pounds the flock puts on. To have any chance of making a profit, there’s enormous pressure to grow broiler chickens as fat and as fast as possible. A typical poultry barn can go through five to seven flocks a year. After each flock moves out, the farmers are left to deal with the muck.

“The folks that grow the chickens, it’s a really tough job that they do and hard to make a buck at it,” said Tom Jordan, an ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center who specializes in how farming impacts Chesapeake Bay.

Another thing that’s hiding in the chicken manure? E. coli bacteria. Some of these E. coli don’t cause disease. But others can inflict both chickens and people with diarrhea and other unsavory side effects, like urinary tract infections.

Some E. coli bacteria have become resistant to our antibiotics. This May, scientists reported that because chicken manure fertilizes farms throughout the Chesapeake, that antibiotic resistance can also spread in the water. Besides the already-prevalent problem of nutrient pollution, this could put swimmers and boaters who use the water for recreation at further risk.

“Right now, sometimes the poultry barns get cleaned and they immediately apply it on land, so it’s just fresh waste going directly on our land,” said Jay Graham, lead author of the new study and a public health researcher with the University of California, Berkeley. “So if it rains, then all that ends up in our waterways.”

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We’re Winning The Fight Against Mercury Pollution

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on April 24th, 2020

Photo of a river with a power plant in the background, white smokestacks billowing above it.

Chalk Point Generating Station on the Patuxent River, near Aquasco, Maryland. The gas billowing out of this power plant has already passed through some emissions-cleaning technology, thanks to healthier air regulations. (Credit: Cindy Gilmour/SERC)

by Kristen Minogue

Marylanders can celebrate at least one environmental win this year. Since 2005, toxic mercury pollution in the state’s rain has dropped over a third.

The preliminary figure comes from three state monitoring stations: Beltsville, Frostburg and a weather tower in Edgewater, at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). All three stations belong to the Mercury Deposition Network, a collection of roughly 100 sites tracking mercury across the U.S.

Maryland’s success partially stems from early regulations—most notably the 2006 Healthy Air Act. The act mandated reductions for some of the most dangerous pollutants in the atmosphere: nitrogen dioxides that create smog; the sulfur dioxide behind both smog and acid rain; and, of course, mercury.

“We’ve had a long time to see those changes happen,” said senior scientist Cindy Gilmour, who runs the mercury station at SERC. “Other U.S. states have not had those rules in place as long.” The federal government issued its first rule on mercury emissions in 2011, with the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards for Power Plants.

View from the forest floor, looking up at silver open-air tower stretching above trees

SERC’s 120-foot meteorological tower has collected data on mercury levels in rain since 2007, one of three Maryland stations in the Mercury Deposition Network. (Credit: Kristen Minogue/SERC)

Gilmour launched SERC’s mercury monitoring program in 2007. At the time, SERC’s 120-foot meteorological tower was already collecting data on weather and other chemicals in rain.

“I thought it would be great to put mercury on top of that,” she said. She approached the Maryland Department of Natural Resources and suggested adding SERC as a third Mercury Deposition Network site in Maryland. “We said, guys, you’re just about to put mercury controls on power plants. This would be a great time to start looking at this.” The state has funded SERC’s mercury station ever since, as well SERC’s projects monitoring mercury and the neurotoxin methylmercury in streams.

For Gilmour, the falling mercury in rain marks a major milestone. But it’s only the beginning of a long journey. Slashing mercury concentrations in rain is one step; tracking it in streams and food webs is another. Her lab will continue watching mercury, to help ensure Maryland continues moving forward.

And while the improvements didn’t come cheap—Gilmour estimates pollution control systems cost roughly $1 billion for each large power plant—for taxpayers, more breathable air cost just a few extra cents per month.

“For a few cents on our electric bills over the last 10 years, we got this,” Gilmour said. “We also got reductions in asthma. We got increases in how clear our air is. The air’s less yellow and it’s more transparent.”

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Fred Tutman: Fighting for Justice and Inclusion on the Patuxent River

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on April 24th, 2020

by Kristen Minogue

After nearly three decades in television, Fred Tutman left filmmaking to found the Patuxent Riverkeeper in 2004. For 16 years, the Patuxent Riverkeeper organization has empowered citizens to advocate for their right to a healthy environment. Today he’s also lending his leadership skills as a Director’s Circle volunteer with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centeer, and spoke on environmental justice this April at the Smithsonian’s Earth Optimism digital summit. Learn more about some of the Patuxent Riverkeepers’ greatest environmental wins, and how the green movement can evolve to meet the needs of a diverse future. Edited for brevity and clarity.

Fred Tutman paddling a red kayak on a river

Fred Tutman (Credit: Audobon Naturalist Society)

What motivated you to be involved in conservation?
I thought that my future was going to be in radio, television, media communications. As an activist, because I’d always been an activist, I thought that was the best portal for me to change my corner of the world. And, you know, I did that for 27 years…But I was bored and didn’t feel like I was making a difference in all of these awful problems in the world we were making films about…

So I decided to go to law school, because I knew nobody who knew me thought I could do that, just because I hadn’t done that sort of thing before….It was a different world, a different life for me. It was really hard to reboot. I literally had to change my friends. Not because people were hostile to the work. They didn’t understand how it fit into my past endeavors. And so people were baffled by it. A midlife crisis, I think someone accused me of that. Click to continue »

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Preserving Salmon in Alaska’s Kenai Lowlands

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on April 15th, 2020

by Kristen Minogue

“Not everybody in Alaska is a fisherman. But all of us live on salmon land….If you look at a map of the Kenai Peninsula, it just looks like a cardiovascular system. Salmon are like the heartbeat.”

These words, spoken by a young Alaska fisherwoman named Hannah Heimbuch, open a short documentary the Smithsonian created called The Heartbeat. Featured in the D.C. Environmental Film Festival this March, it tells the story of Alaska’s Kenai Lowlands—one of the few places on Earth where sustainable salmon management remains possible. Click to continue »

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In Florida’s Oceans, It’s DNA vs. Disease

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on April 14th, 2020

Patch of mostly brown branching corals underwater, with one infected yellow and white coral

Staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) with white band disease. (Credit: Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn)

by Kristen Minogue

Parasitic slime nets attacking seagrasses. A disease that melts coral tissue down to the skeleton, whose exact cause remains unknown. If these aren’t the first places you’d look for optimism, you’re not alone.

Katrina Lohan heads SERC’s Marine Disease Ecology Lab. She and postdoc Sarah Gignoux-Wolfsohn studied both ailments in Florida. They look for hope in the microscopic realm of DNA. Click to continue »

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Volunteer Spotlight: Student Activist Kallan Benson on Standing Up for Climate Change

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on 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 »

Posted in Climate Change, Ecology, Participatory Science, Volunteers | 1 Response »

Life and science at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center