by Monaca Noble
SERC's Green Village during Snowmageddon February 2010 (Stephen Sanford)
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Snowmageddon vs. Caribbean Creep
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on January 9th, 2012Click to continue »
How Plants (Occasionally) Escape the Food Chain
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on December 23rd, 2011by Kristen Minogue
Leaf shredded by insects. Credit: Marina LaForgia
It’s a trick worthy of any spy thriller: to elude an enemy, hide among something it won’t notice. Or, to be extra safe, something it finds incredibly disgusting. It turns out the same strategy can work for plants that don’t want to get eaten. Sometimes.
For the last seven months, intern Marina LaForgia has kept tabs on tree saplings in more than a dozen different environments and watched the game of ecological survival play out. As she tracked their progress, she searched for an answer to a deceptively simple question: Is diversity good for plants? When it comes to the food chain, will hungry herbivores pass over tasty plants if they’re surrounded by less palatable ones?
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Small Lagoon Fights Off Occupation
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on December 6th, 2011by Monaca Noble
On a thin strip of land between Bolinas Lagoon and the Pacific Ocean lies the neighborhood of Seadrift, a community battling an invasion of crabs that have taken over their lagoon.
European green crab (BrentMWilson)
Seadrift is a small subdivision at the northern tip of Stinson Beach, Calif., sandwiched between Bolinas Lagoon and the Pacific Ocean on a narrow sand spit. It surrounds a small enclosure called the Seadrift Lagoon, an artificial lagoon created for the subdivision. It’s a popular site for visitors, and the lagoon provides recreational enjoyment for the entire community. But for the last two decades one unwelcome visitor has proven to be very bad company.
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Six Endangered Species of the Chesapeake
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on November 23rd, 2011by Kristen Minogue
Bat infected with deadly white-nose syndrome.
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)
The last Western Black Rhino appeared in Cameroon in 2000. Now they’re gone, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which declared the rare subspecies officially extinct Nov. 10. As thousands more species go extinct across the world every year, the Chesapeake Bay watershed is fighting to save its own endangered flora and fauna. Maryland counts 362 plants and animals on its endangered list – and that’s not including the ones that have already been wiped out from the state. Whales, bats, turtles and orchids: here are six of Chesapeake’s most wanted.
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Why We Like Science
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on November 4th, 2011
Above: One perk of student research at SERC. Photo courtesy of the Phytoplankton Lab
It’s impossible to work here without some compulsion to understand the natural world – whether it’s colonial tunicates that bear a creepy resemblance to the Borg or endangered orchids that need microscopic fungi to survive. So when Smithsonian Magazine launched a “Why I Like Science” series on their blog Surprising Science, we took full advantage of the opportunity to share our enthusiasm. Here’s how four staff responded when asked why science is cool.
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Hurricanes, Snakeheads and Dead Zones: What 2011 Weather Meant for the Chesapeake
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on October 5th, 2011by Kristen Minogue
Credit: NOAA Photo Library
How the West Was Won (Back)
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on October 4th, 2011by Monaca Noble
Over the last two years, more than 150 volunteers have been working to remove an invasive Asian kelp from marinas in San Francisco Bay.
Undaria pinnatifida, grown to maturity. (Credit: SERC)
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The Satellite That Could Save the Coasts
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on September 16th, 2011by Kristen Minogue
On a hot afternoon in July, a team of researchers sailing down Chesapeake Bay stumbled across a cluster of striped bass floating in the water. About a dozen of the iridescent black and silver fish bobbed at the surface near the ship’s bow. All of them were dead.
Scientists prepare to measure how light interacts with particles in the Bay. Credit: Carlos DelCastillo
The fish kill came out of a low-oxygen zone near Annapolis, just one symptom of the Bay’s declining health. Overflows of nutrients from farms and cities have fueled massive growths of algae that cut off light and oxygen to the Bay’s lower levels.
“There was a very quiet moment between everybody on the boat,” recalled Vienna Saccomanno, one of the Smithsonian research interns aboard when it was discovered. “You kind of knew what everyone was thinking, feeling empowered to continue with this research and hopefully contribute to prevention of this in our water system.”
The scientists on board weren’t there simply to document the Bay’s many ailments, however. They had joined the 10-day cruise to pave the way for a much larger goal: a geostationary satellite that could provide constant, detailed coverage of coastal health.
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Marshes, Microbes and the Other Blue Carbon
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on September 6th, 2011by 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.
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)
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Intern Logs: A Soldier and a Scientist
Posted by Kristen Goodhue on August 19th, 2011This summer the SERC interns had a unique addition to their ranks – Iraq veteran Kiel Edson, a former Marine finishing his last year of undergrad at California State University, Sacramento. In this edited Q&A, the 28-year-old shares thoughts on Iraq, SERC and the transition from soldier to researcher.
After five years working as a Russian linguist for the Marines, 28-year-old Kiel Edson started college and discovered his passion for conservation biology. (Credit: Michael Tobias.)
What kind of work did you do for the Marines in Iraq?
E: I was part of a group of what’s called Signal Support Team. We basically go out onto missions off the base, closer to the main cities, and we collect intelligence on what’s happening within the city. And then anything relevant that we find, we basically just write-up in situation reports or intelligence reports and send them off to the commanders who are making decisions as to how to handle the situations in that city. We just tell them, hey, they know that you’re going to ambush, or they know about the convoy going through on Thursday, so that they can change the way that they operate to avoid taking casualties, or they know going in there’s going to be a firefight, so everybody’s prepared for it. It’s not a surprise.
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