For my virtual excursion, I wanted to learn about the environment around me. Because of this, I stumbled onto the Chesapeake bay foundation website and found an interest in their youtube video on Throwing Shade: Heat Islands, Public Health, and Clean Water. This video started discussing how the National climate has increased substantially over time. However, from there it very quickly honed in on the Midatlantic area and how we and Virginia, the area studied, have not only been experiencing extreme climate changes, but people have been directly affected by these climate changes with illnesses linked to the changes in weather. A graph in the presentation had a complete exponential growth curve showing the apparent temperature change and how many hospital visits were present in Virginia. This extreme heat is even more present in urban areas as urban heat islands are shown with the major cities accounting for the most heat. From there, the way that the urban heat was mapped was shown with a temperature data logger attached to a car that drives around urban areas. The video then goes into the data logged in the city of Richmond. What was found was that the hottest areas lacked urban canopy infrastructure. For community health, differing area codes could work to improving their local heats by planting trees and seeking changes. Possible benefits with this changed infrastructural plan would be an increase in the quality of air. I find some of the main points convincing but I disagree with others. I agree that we have been experiencing climate change as it is something I can see in my everyday life. In the past 2 years, I can count the number of times it has snowed and it is very noticeable in how much warmer the winters are while the summers are hitting record highs, but I believe that focusing in on major cities was not a proper solution. As the purpose of this video was to focus in on the midatlantic, cities would not represent the entire population that is being affected as suburban areas and even farm areas need to be integrated as well. A lot of the methods that were used and the solutions were very specific to cities when I watched the the video to learn more about how I could make a difference. Other issues I found with the presentation involved the usage of graphs. There was constant switching between national and city wide heatmaps. I thought that this deferred from the slowly moving inwards into Richmond. However, I agree with a lot of the statement and actions in the video. Climate change is definitely a problem and the graph speaks for itself: people in Virginia were encountering illnesses due to the increased heat. I found the method of heat logging to be very interesting as it actually required a car to drive around the cities and areas to map. However, if the cities were being mapped out, traffic and the density of cities would have slowed the process down, so a way to make the research easier would be to change the setting of the experimentation such as in a suburban area where the population is not as large and the city density is not as large. I also found that image depictions of heat islands were very effective at showcasing how important it is to stop them as the vivid coloration of the images expressed the concern that the general viewers should feel towards heat islands. Those areas will eventually reach higher levels of temperature that will impact water resources and even water quality. To fix the issue of heat islands, along with the solutions discussed in the video, I would promote the usage of solar powered energy sources. In a city like richmond, the larger corporations could benefit from switching out their window panes with a newly developed solar window pane that could harness a lot of sunlight and pass it onto the rest of the city for compensation from the government.
For my second excursion report, I chose to keep my focus local and continue focus on the Chesapeake bay, the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary, or JBWS, is a Bay 7 miles out of the Chesapeake with internship opportunities that I watched the presentation on. This presentation was hosted by Dillon Waters, Jessie Wynn, and Matthew Payne. These students were conducting different research in the Jug Bay that corresponded to their field of interest. Dillon’s area of research was around Patuxent river. His research used satellite imagery to compare the shoreline levels between extended periods of time. His results have found that over 11 years, the shoreline had been pushed back due to erosion and other variables. Dillon showed a satellite image that had the shorelines lined up in red and yellow and the red 2018 shoreline was farther back. This corresponded to the increasing erosion rate. Jessie Wynn did her research in the Jug Bay farm reserve to test the growth of differing species of trees. She found that the American Beech had the highest reproductive rate as it took over 28% of her plotted areas. Matthew Payne observed the presence of predators in Jugg Bay. He found that Foxes and Raccoons were the most common predators observed through camera trapping. Overall, I found no issues with the clarity of the research and I understood that it was the best methods to solve the research questions that the 3 stated. However, I think that there is a hasty generalization in Payne’s research that it is 1 species of fox and raccoon. This makes it seem like they are all the same species when there could be differing types of these animals. This research also does not represent the future or the past as it represents the time period researched. However, I really enjoyed seeing the use of camera technology to track the predators. I know that other researchers will use marking techniques that can seem unethical and are very difficult due to the long amount of time it takes to find the non marked animals, but camera techniques, although less accurate, are a lot more efficient and can provide a good estimate of the population of predators in the area. One of the issues and questions I had with Wynn’s research was what she did to make the samples as random as possible. And how do we know if there is bias in the population being studied. The areas she selected could have contained mostly American Beech’s when the rest of the forest did not contain any American Beech’s. I also had a questions regarding whether certain seeds are able to counter the growth of other trees. If the American Beech was killing off other seedlings to grow till adulthood, would that classify it as a predator. If the American Beech is a predator, how should the other plantlife in the population be produced and protected? An issue with the graph on Dillon’s satellite image was that it was too zoomed out. To really show how much the shoreline had changed, zooming the diagram in would have helped show the main point in his research.