Christopher Lopez
Mechanical Engineering
A James Clark School of Engineering-Mechanical Engineering Program
College Park Scholars-Science and Global Change Program
This is the enterance sign to the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Egdewater Maryland, I unforutally left my phone in the van during the activites. I was also quite rainy that day so it might have been better that it didn't get wet anyhow.
The excursion was to learn about the habitats in Maryland and the active research that is being concocted at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC). The mission of SERC is to conduct coastline climate and environment research that is relevant to the 21st century. Their research is extensive and includes things such as the water quality of the surrounding bay, invasive species, toxic chemicals, and conservation. According to the SERC website they serve as “a natural laboratory for long-term and cutting edge ecological research”. We unfortunately didn’t get to spend enough time there to see much of the research that is being conducted there but we were able to see research about species counts in the bay and conducted one ourselves. We did this by casting nets like native americans used to do when fishing in the area and bringing them to shore where we collected any life that was caught in the nets, it was then counted and put into tanks. While we only did this a few times we were able to get a rough estimate as to what was living in the immediate area at the time. To increase the accuracy when attempting to figure out what is actually in the bay with a method such as this more days of data would need to be conducted. The samples would also need to be from many different places, water depths, and microenvironments. This takes years to properly conduct and SERC has been doing so for years so that they have a good understanding of what is living the the Chesapeake Bay. When you get enough data you can start seeing what types of animals are in different places at different times, doing this while also considering the changes over time can help scientists predict changes in populations of species in places as the climate changes. One way that they are measuring the environment and its changes at SERC we are able to see but only from a distance, the team there has been running experiments in growing plants in increased CO2 like what might be seen in the future for over three decades now, one of the oldest studies in its field in the world. These experiments have been the subject of many scientific papers about plants in the future, for example just this year a paper was published using the findings of SERC called “Accelerated sea-level rise is suppressing CO2 stimulation of tidal marsh productivity: A 33-year study” which looked about the effects of several factors in the environment and how after two decades the plants began to function more normally despite still being in higher CO2 rich than they had evolved in. All these studies are to better understand the environment as it changes because of us, even in a place where we are studying in a controlled environment what changes we have made there is clear evidence that we have made a large mark on this world. One such example was that the forest that we walked through according to our tour guides was a “new growth” forest and had in fact not that long ago been cleared and part of a cow far. The effects of this meant that there were only so many large trees and most of the place was quite crowded with trees competing with one another for space. Our production of various resources had cut down much of the old-growth steady forests that were on the East Coast. Invasive species such as the Water Crest that we saw at the Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens during Service Day. Another type of invasive species such as japanese barberry I believe were seen at SERC by us on that day. These types of invasive plants were moved here from other continents by direct thought most likely unintentional human intervention. Human’s have made forests at SERC regrow after being cut down and tkae on new species of plants. When we went out to the island and looked at where the atmospheric experiments were taking place we saw it surrounded by tall grass that was also invasive thought I couldn’t find the name of it. All these plants have altered the ecology of the surrounding facility. Since SERC is publicly funded and needs to reach out to the community inorder to provide value to it, it conducts educational programs just like the one that we went on. They also conduct public tours during operating hours to anyone wanting to. They educate the public about issues and current events in the feilds they study. They share their finding with others in the field and publish as well so if a person is interested in the technical components of the study’s being done there they can do so. I think that overall this is effective but if they had a bigger presence online outside of scientific publications then their mission and the positive reaesrc they are doing there could reach a wider audience.