Event name:Horn Point Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Research & "Underground Underwater: Climate Change and Harriet Tubman's Legacy"
Event time and place:April 18, 2026 in Cambridge, MD
Topic 1: Oyster Renewal
Algal blooms, low oxygen dead zones, and overharvesting can cause the oyster population to go down. Oysters are a keystone species in the Chesapeake Bay so the population of many other species depend on the health of the oyster species. I know one way to measure health is to see how many new larvae latch onto an oyster shell. Finally, I got to see oyster shells being cleaned and getting prepared to be the home for the new shells as they don't want the oysters to inhabit a bad shell. Horn Point Laboratory also has a recycling station and the recycling program in general is very huge as they have almost mountains of oyster shells that are in various stages of preparation for new larvae.
Topic 2: Bay Biodiversity
There are a few things I remember that affect which creature lives where in the bay: temperature, salinity, and depth of the water. One of the things changing is the salinity of the water. If a place where a creature lives has their environment changing it can have disastrous effects for it and the rest of the species which are interconnected with its existence. The situation is monitored with these cylindrical devices that float in the water and can withstand high pressure. They contain a lot of information that is useful for the scientists at the Horn Point Laboratory which they then use to support a variety of things to help preserve the bay. This includes analyzing the data and then making sure the proposed solutions actually make sense according to the data that they currently have.
Topic 3: Tidal Wetlands at Poplar Island
I saw that habitat provision for a variety of species is the main benefit of these marshes so creating them helps species and some protected species as well which prevents biodiversity from shrinking further. Some factors that affect the health of these marshes include the nutrients in the water and the sea level rise. I got to see how Horn Point Laboratory has been measuring nutrient enrichment by measuring the biomass production of the plants and using sediment elevation tables to measure sediment accretion. This is important because too much nitrogen as a nutrient makes a plant look big but has a small root in comparison which makes it easier to blow away. I learned that Horn Point Laboratory has been using the data they gather from monitoring the nutrients to help formulate improvements in their marsh design and make them more resistant to problems caused by the excess of nutrients like Nitrogen.
I believe field trips for tours like this is a great way that they are educating the community about what is happening. I think giving people the chance to see the forefront of their research gives them a huge chance to talk about what they do and discover. Furthermore, sometimes the tours cost money, so during October they host a free Open House to talk about what they do which removes another obstacle people may have to learn more about the Horn Point Laboratory.
I learned that Harriet Tubman had a lot of time to learn the lay of the land, and then could use their knowledge to help other people. Also, Harriet's father was a very skilled man with trees and woodwork. Normally in that time families were separated, but Harriet's father's master and Harriet's master were also family, and Harriet's father was a skilled man so Harriet's master didn't mind when her father came over. I think this gave Harriet in particular a little bit of an edge in the natural knowledge of her surroundings and how to use this to help other enslaved people escape to the North of the United States.
Also something I learned about is that most of these sites where action took place are near the water. Also the Underground Railroad is also very low altitude (hence the name underground). So if the water level keeps on rising then we won't be able to access the different houses from this 'railroad' and the knowledge about Harriet Tubman's activism would probably peak as soon as we wouldn't be able to find any more information if stuff we didn't find was lost to sea level rise.
Finally, the thing I and some other people are concerned about is this knowledge tapering off if people wish to erase it. We live in the age of the Internet so erasing something is almost impossible, but it is definitely still plausible that there could be a bad-faith effort to erase Harriet's legacy when the primary sources start to become inaccessible.