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Watch: Uzay Sezen, Jess Shue and Alex Koure demonstrate how to bring leaves down from the canopy with a crossbow.
Nearly every beech tree in Harvard Forest is sick. A fungus called Neonectria is attacking their bark, leaving it pockmarked, gnarly and coated in fruiting spores that look like angry zits. And it’s trying to steal their sugar. But the trees are fighting back.
To make that discovery, biologist Uzay Sezen spent two years extracting genetic material from beech leaves. For comparison, he also looked at healthy beeches in a forest at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) in Maryland, his home institution. The work was part of a new study published this spring in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
“What is it Harvard Forest trees are doing differently, in order to survive that chronically diseased state?” Sezen asked.
SERC wetland and orchid ecologist among first recipients of Smithsonian’s Distinguished Career Service Medal
by Kristen Goodhue
Dennis Whigham in the Kenai Lowlands of Alaska (Credit: Kelsie Moore)
Senior botanist Dennis Whigham spent his career studying what others might miss: The unassuming alder tree. The underappreciated wetland. The threatened orchid that’s so small and green, it nearly blends in with the forest. The microscopic fungi that same orchid depends on to survive. In the process, he built collaborations to understand and protect some of the rarest and most vital pieces of life on Earth.
This spring, after 46 years heading his Plant Ecology Lab, Whigham received the Smithsonian’s Distinguished Career Service Medal. He is among the first Smithsonian staff to receive it, the first year the institution has offered it.
Oyster restoration in Maryland’s Harris Creek (Credit: SERC Fisheries Conservation Lab)
In Maryland, two things mark the return of spring more than any other: boating and blue crab season. Oyster season—a cold-weather enterprise—closes March 31. But this year, like last year, dozens of volunteers are taking their boats to local oyster reefs—not to harvest them, but to check the health of Maryland’s oyster restorations.
It’s part of a new participatory science project at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center called “Oyster Cam.” The project trains watershed organizations and their volunteers to deploy underwater cameras, collecting videos of oyster reefs across the state.
To Replenish Adult Spawners, Marine Protected Areas Need Strong Enforcement and Climate-Friendly Design
by Kristen Goodhue
Bluestriped grunts and gray snapper, two fish species vital to the local economy, in Belize’s Hol Chan Marine Reserve. (Credit: Pete Oxford/iLCP)
Age matters when determining how to protect life in the ocean. Every population needs a strong cohort of adults to produce the next generation. But many marine protected areas (MPAs) are falling short of their most basic purpose: to rebuild struggling fish populations. In a new study published this month in Global Change Biology, scientists looked at the age breakdown of reef fish in marine protected areas for the first time. They discovered in almost all of them, adult fish populations have either flatlined or declined.
When Superstorm Sandy reached New York on Oct. 29, 2012, it pummeled the coastline with 80 mile-per-hour winds, flooding streets and subway tunnels. Leaving over $70 billion of destruction across its entire path, Sandy ranks among the costliest natural disasters in U.S. history. But in the northeastern U.S, coastal wetlands prevented an estimated $625 million in damage.
The world needs wetlands to protect us from climate change, and not only in the form of extreme weather. Coastal wetlands are champions at storing carbon in their soils—231 metric tons per hectare on average, according to one estimate.
Jaxine Wolfe prepares an acid test to determine the presence of inorganic carbon in a soil sample for the Coastal Carbon Atlas. (Credit: Kristen Goodhue/SERC)
“Wetlands are pulling a lot of weight for the given amount of area that they take up on the planet,” said Jaxine Wolfe, a research technician with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). “And so there’s a lot of excitement about leveraging these ecosystems for the mitigation of climate change effects. You can do a lot by conserving a particular wetland or restoring it.”
“The conservation of wetlands, while it might have global effects, also has the most localized benefits,” said fellow data technician Henry Betts, citing examples like sustaining fisheries and recreation. “Keeping them healthy and growing can benefit people directly in their everyday lives.”
Wolfe and Betts work on a team illuminating the unique powers of wetlands. This winter, in the January issue of Global Change Biology, the team unveiled an online database centered on how wetlands store carbon worldwide: The Coastal Carbon Atlas and Library. It contains data from nearly 15,000 soil cores from every continent except Antarctica. Like a true public library, the data are freely available to everyone. And it’s revolutionizing our ability to make predictions about wetlands and climate change.
Jessika de Jesus takes notes on the new Living Seawall project in San Francisco. (Credit: Corryn Knapp)
Over one hundred years ago, San Francisco built its first seawall: a 3-mile, concrete wall that protects the city’s shores from sea level rise and erosion.
Beth Bowers tags a blacktip shark with Florida Atlantic University (Credit: Dr. Stephen Kajiura)
Beth Bowers follows the journeys of aquatic animals, using tags that transmit sound signals. As a new postdoc in SERC’s Fisheries Conservation Lab, she’s now using her skills to study how offshore wind farms could impact marine life along the Atlantic coast. Her specialty is “acoustic telemetry”—a technology where scientists outfit animals with special acoustic tags to track their movements underwater. By knowing where animals move, feed and breed, governments can make better decisions about how we develop renewable energy while minimizing impacts to the environment.
In this Q&A, Beth explains how acoustic telemetry works, her hopes for the future and advice for aspiring scientists. Edited for brevity and clarity.
Animals that can thrive on floating trash. A possible origin story for toxic mercury in our food web. The true power of protected areas, and the secret to a successful forest. This past year had its fair share of jaw-dropping moments for the scientists at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). Here are eight of our favorite discoveries from 2023—from the hopeful and inspiring to the utterly bizarre.
Plastic debris with a mix of coastal barnacles (pink and striped) and a gooseneck barnacle from the open ocean. (Credit: SERC Marine Invasions Lab)
Coastal creatures are flourishing in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.Floating plastic pollution is creating a new habitat in the open ocean, one where coastal animals can prosper. In a new study, ecologists analyzed 105 pieces of debris from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. They found hundreds of marine invertebrates, belonging to 37 groups which they once thought could survive only on the coasts. The discovery heralds a new era fighting invasive species, when animals can cross entire oceans on plastic rafts. It’s also a shakeup for once-stable ecosystems on the high seas: The newcomers are grabbing space from ocean-open animals and occasionally even eating them.
Theler Wetlands Nature Preserve, a tidal marsh in Washington State. (Credit: Joe Mabel, cropped. Creative Commons License)
In an era of climate change and global warming, the United States must look to an unlikely savior for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: coastal wetlands.
Wetlands, otherwise known as salt marshes or tidal swamps, have achieved celebrity status for their ability to store large amounts of carbon. Unfortunately, man-made structures like bridges and dams have triggered many wetlands to emit carbon in the form of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Luckily, a recent study indicates that some coastal wetlands could slash their methane emissions dramatically–up to the equivalent of 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide–if they’re restored to their most natural, environmentally friendly state.
“Plant it and forget it for 10 years. Nothing interesting happens in young forests.”
John Parker remembers hearing that advice from a colleague who worked in tropical forests. It was the summer of 2012. Parker, a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), was on the verge of planting 20,000 tree saplings on the center’s campus. Once planted, his team would watch a new forest grow from scratch. He hoped the project would continue for at least a century.
“I was pretty worried,” Parker said. The early years were especially rough, as his lab worked to win small grants and recruit interns to help keep it going. “We didn’t forget it,” he said. “We kept the experiment running and collected data. But it was somewhat piecemeal without a big grant to hold it all together.”
Just over a decade later, the 60-acre experiment—BiodiversiTREE—is a thriving mosaic of sycamores, elms, tulip poplars and 13 other tree species. It’s attracted scientists from around the world. Some are former SERC postdocs returning with their students. Others are new collaborators.
Parker now sees the project as a model of “if you build it, they will come.” But building it was tough.
