Rebecca Hale: City Streams and the Future of Urban Ecology

Posted by Kristen Goodhue on January 10th, 2023

by Kristen Goodhue

Scientist crouches in a stream beside a V-shaped weir, surrounded by yellow and orange autumn leaves. — _{Rebecca Hale sits beside one of SERC’s weirs, which tracks pollution and flow in streams. (Credit: Kristen Goodhue/SERC)}

Rebecca Hale joined the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) last fall as the center’s first urban ecologist. Her new lab, the Watershed Science Lab, focuses on how cities can develop sustainably, especially where urban streams are concerned. In this Q&A, she talks about urban ecology, community-based science, environmental justice and the streams that scientists often forget. Edited for brevity and clarity.

When did you first know you wanted to be a scientist?

When I first started undergrad, I did not think I wanted to go into science at all. I didn’t really understand how creative science could be, and I wanted to do something that involved more creativity and not just memorizing stuff, which is how I was taught science in high school, as I’m sure most of us were.

And I took this ecology class where we had to be really creative to come up with interesting questions and think about what the answers to those questions could be. And we had to work collaboratively with our classmates, colleagues, to really figure out what was going on and what shaped ecosystems to be the way they are today.

How did you start in the field of urban ecology?

There was a research project I participated in one summer, and we were looking at restored agricultural systems. And I just remember talking to my mentor there, and being really excited about thinking about those feedbacks between humans and their environment, and how we move together as an integrated system through time. I wanted to do work where there was an opportunity to study that intersection between humans and the environment really closely. And it dawned upon me that cities were actually a place where that happens quite intensely….

And then I found a research project as an undergraduate working in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, and that was my first real foray into urban ecosystems, and I really liked it. That was then my goal, to do work in urban ecosystems.

Let’s talk about community-based science. You mentioned a really eye-opening conference in Austin, where ecologists brainstormed urban ecology solutions with members of the community. What was one of your biggest takeaways from that?

We like to go into these systems as ecologists or as people from the city who are like, all right, so there’s this flooding problem, so we’re going to throw all this green infrastructure into it. It’s going to be so great. Green infrastructure has all these benefits and it’s so wonderful. And this [activist] from the community was like, wait a minute. This is a neighborhood that has been disinvested forever…. Are you giving us green infrastructure because it’s cheaper? What the heck? And so she saw it as a continuation of environmental injustice.

…

The other thing that was just so eye-opening about it was the need to really develop trust. And in many ways, earning trust means investing.

A brown urban stream flows beside a road, with snow-capped mountains in the background — _{An urban stream in Salt Lake City, Utah, one of several Rebecca Hale has studied in her career. (Credit: Rebecca Hale)}

Are there ways you hope to involve community science in your work at SERC?

I’m excited about talking with Alison [Cawood] about ways that we can do community science where they’re contributing to the process, the entire process, and not using people to collect data but instead working with communities to figure out what the important questions are and then working with them to then conduct that research. And that’s of course terrifying, because you have no idea what they’re going to think is interesting and whether you’re going to have the skills to do it. But I think that’s also one of the opportunities here that’s really exciting.

How have our ideas about urban ecology changed?

An urban stream with large black pebbles and a metallic and concrete overhang — _{An urban stream in Salt Lake City, Utah. Scientists have discovered it takes very little development to impact stream health. (Credit: Rebecca Hale)}

It doesn’t take much to have a really big impact on stream ecosystems. There were people in [a conference] I was in that were saying, the answer is zero population growth; we just shouldn’t have more humans….But it is not the job of an ecologist to make sure that there’s less population growth; that’s way outside of our wheelhouse. Instead, we can study the cities as they are and work with people to make them to be better. How do we do development in a way where it has less of an impact?… And the efforts to do that work, to work with decision makers, to work with communities, it’s been remarkable to see how that’s changed over the past 20 years. It’s very exciting.

You’ve worked a lot with intermittent streams. What are intermittent streams, and why have scientists overlooked them so much?

An intermittent stream is any stream that ceases to have surface flow, generally on a seasonal timescale….So why are they important? More than half of the streams in the U.S. are intermittent. But if you look at papers about the global impact of streams on CO₂ emissions or the carbon cycle, and you look deep into their methods, they say, “We didn’t include any intermittent streams.” But it’s more than half the streams!

Do a lot of organisms rely on intermittent streams for habitat?

They’re certainly very important for habitat. They provide habitat to aquatic organisms that use them when they’re flowing. And they also provide habitat for terrestrial organisms when they’re dry….Intermittent streams are used for our water supply in places because those are the only streams there are…And so that lays the argument for, well, we should protect intermittent streams even if they’re dry sometimes, because they’re still important as streams when they’re wet.

Do you have any advice for aspiring scientists?

It’s okay to feel like you’re out of your element. Don’t be scared of feeling stupid. It means you’re on the right track…If you already know the answer, you’re not asking the right questions. You should have no idea what you’re going to find, right? Because that means that you’re on the frontier and you’re doing something new. And it should be scary. And that’s okay.