SERC Excursion

October 4th 2025, Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (Edgewater, Maryland)

This excursion began before my excursion group’s arrival at the destination. Exiting college park as a group in a van, I could see in plain detail human influence on the natural environment. There were many disruptions to the environment from the vehicle emissions from the hundreds of vehicles crossing the highways, including ours, to the hundreds of miles of overlapping roads disrupting the habitats of wildlife. As we arrived closer to the Serc research center, the amount of human structures and influence lessened. As we arrived at the research center, the only indication of human activity aside from the road to enter were footpaths, a dock, and the center itself.

Activities at SERC began with a hike guided by a mix of research staff, interns and volunteers. The hike began in a forest with an abundance of biodiversity. It seems like every second a guide was explaining the presence and context of a unique plant or animal, like citronella for example, which was a shrub sized plant which had leaves that smelled of citrus. Historically the leaves of these plants were burned in a fire to act as a mosquito repellent that also doubled as a great smelling air freshener. Something as innocuous as holes in a tree lead to the discovery of woodpeckers in the environment.

As we were led to a small clearing with tree stump seats we were educated on one of the experiments. In order to measure the growth in both height and radius of the various species of trees, metal bands were fastened onto a tree trunk. As the tree grew both ways the changes could be noted year after year to measure the effect the environment had on tree growth. Since the environment lacked environmental contamination from humans such as street runoff or plastic pollution researchers could isolate variables such as water salinity or biodiversity to see how those impacted the growth of trees. This has huge implications for many reasons through many perspectives. Economically lumber is a valuable resource so being able to grow more sustainably is economically advantageous. For the wider world trees serve as one of the largest methods for sequestering carbon, helping to stabilize the climate so by learning how to grow bigger healthier trees, we’re better able to deal with climate change as a whole.

We were then led to the marshes on walkways where we were able to see a prominent example of human impact on the environment. Through its use as a packing material, phragmites, a species of long grass, was introduced to the marshes of Maryland. As we walked we could see how phragmites had taken over large swaths of the marsh, outcompeting the native long grasses. It was here when the guides explained another experiment. River otters used a small crawlspace under a portion of the walkway on the marsh as a gathering spot and as a communal spot to leave droppings. Researchers would collect these droppings, sanitize them by baking them in a hot oven and then use the remnants of what the otter ate to identify the biodiversity present in the river and marshes. This is important for the world because being able to measure biodiversity allows for researchers to keep a pulse on the health of the environment. The health of local ecosystems is crucial for the global food supply as foods that we harvest such as fish often subsist on these ecosystems. If crucial members of the ecosystem disappear the whole system could collapse having potentially devastating consequences on the food supply.

Throughout the excursion our guides mentioned the various ways that they involve the community at large from the ability to volunteer, to free and public activities hosted by SERC similar to our excursion where anyone is able to learn about the natural environment. Another particularly interesting method of involving the community at large was participatory science where people are able to publicly assist science by taking photos of the natural environment or reviewing footage for wildlife sightings. I think participatory science is a particularly effective form of outreach because it allows anyone regardless of level of education to participate in the process of science in a meaningful way.

Overall I really enjoyed this excursion as it was an opportunity to both relax in nature trying things such as hiking and seining (excluded for brevity) and learn more about the connections between ecological conservation and science.