SERC does a multitude of scientific research on their 2,650 acre environment. The most notable to me were controlling the invasive species of Phragmites as they are completely destroying the ecosystem causing many organisms in marshes and habitats being completely filled by these Phragmites making it completely uninhabitable. Another big research project that SERC commits monitors and tests is how how much Nitrogen Pollution affects the environment, but they also have the world’s longest-running field experiment on ecosystem responses to elevated CO2. Both of these experiment help a regional and global level in trying to protect their environment from these invasive Phragmites, but also trying to manage CO2 levels in an ecosystem and swamp habitats to produce the most sustainable environment that’ll be most beneficial to the environment.
One habitat that they do research in are huge marshes that contain so much biodiversity in these areas and study how nitrogen pollution affects the biodiversity in this area. They clearly research how nitrogen pollution affects biodiversity, but also how this destroys the water and marine life. Humans clearly have direct impact on this as agricultural runoff will cause many problems over a long period of time causing algal blooms and dead zones. Another habitat that SERC has been researching in are forest ecosystems. SERC leads Forest Geo which keeps track of over 70 forests and how climate change affects the tree diversity, but also the wildlife of each environment. Humans have a huge impact on these environments as we continue to expand infrastructure and cause so much deforestation all over the world we are completely destroying a vast number of tree species and displacing so many organisms from their environments. SERC does multiple internship opportunities to help branch out to others to help more people learn about the environment we live in and unfortunately destroy on a daily basis. SERC also has many educational programs to teach kids and even adults and foster them into learning about their local and global environment and how our everyday actions and lifestyle choices affect this. They also have an outreach of volunteers to learn more about what they can do in their environment by signing up for a volunteering newsletter. These different outreach programs are somewhat effective, but in order to gage a larger audience they need to raise more awareness of whats happening in our everyday environment and how this will affect the new generations to come. Personally I’ve never head of SERC until UMD and I wish to have learned earlier about what I could’ve started doing at a younger age to help the environment.