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Research Amid COVID

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How the “Blue Methane” Team Used COVID Restrictions To Get More Data Than Ever

Thursday, April 15th, 2021

by Kristen Minogue

Three scientists in masks taking measurements in a wetland

Erika Koontz (right) pauses for a selfie with Shelby Cross (left) and Kyle Derby (center) while doing methane sampling in Maryland’s Jug Bay, one of the few sites she could visit in-person during the pandemic. (Credit: Erika Koontz)

This article is part of 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.

Like many scientists, Erika Koontz was hired for a specific project. She had just begun a job as a technician with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center’s Biogeochemistry Lab. Her new supervisor, James Holmquist, had an ambitious goal in mind: Uncover how wetlands across the U.S. store—or emit—the powerful greenhouse gas methane. They called it the Blue Methane project.

“It’s a dataset that’s really never been attempted before, to be housed under one single project,” Koontz said. During field season, Koontz would visit wetlands on the East, West and Gulf Coasts, sampling methane in their porewater and measuring the flux of methane into and out of their soils.

Koontz started her job in March 2020. Enough said on that subject.

The next six months were some of the busiest of her life.

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TEMPEST Experiment Mimics Future Storms Inside Forests

Monday, December 7th, 2020

by Aliya Uteuova

Woman standing with outstretched arms on one of four giant grey tanks, with an orange ladder propped up beneath her.

Postdoc Anya Hopple stands atop freshwater tanks for the new TEMPEST experiment. Each tank can hold 10,000 gallons of water, which will saturate forest soils to simulate heavy rainfall events. (Credit: Rick Smith)

Heavy rainfall and storm surges rank among the most common natural-weather events in the United States. They can occur in every state. They’re also one of the most widely felt impacts of climate change, making it impossible to ignore the economic and physical harm they leave in their wakes.

In a forest at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC), scientists are working to uncover how sudden deluges could impact forests in decades to come. Called TEMPEST, the new experiment will mimic intense freshwater rainstorms and saltwater storm surges by inundating parts of the forest.

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Plastic Cleanup Expedition Helps Research Stay Afloat During Pandemic

Friday, September 4th, 2020

by Isabella Eclipse

Yellow buoy floating in water, with bottom covered in barnacles and a diver taking photos behind it.

Plastic buoy in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, colonized by gooseneck barnacles and crabs. (Credit: Justin Hofman/Greenpeace)

This article is part of 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.

In nature, adaptation is key to survival. This year more than ever, being adaptable and resilient has also been essential to working as a scientist. Faced with a pandemic, researchers around the world have had to find creative ways to continue their work.

SERC postdoc Linsey Haram is part of the FloatEco Project, a research collaboration that studies artificial ecosystems made of floating ocean plastic. By hitchhiking on pieces of plastic, coastal organisms can drift into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and survive in the middle of the ocean.

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Orchid Hybrids Offer Clues for Conservation

Thursday, 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

Friday, 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

Friday, 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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Shorelines