Early on the morning of Saturday September 21st - with the sun still rising in the sky, and most of campus still fast asleep - I and fifteen other students piled into a couple white vans and set out on our trip. Managing to beat the worst of the traffic, we made our way out west to the edge of the Chesapeake Bay. There, spanning 15 miles of coastline and over 2500 square acres of land, sat the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center.
My first impression of the Center cast it as a bastion of the natural world. Just an hour out from the capital, small fish glittered just past the water's edge, trees stretched to the heights of the sky, and cormorants skimmed the surface of the waves. But while the diversity of ecosystems there was impressive to me, it was - I learned - nowhere close to how the area used to be. Large swathes of the marshes, which used to be populated by a complicated ecosystem of local species, had been taken over by the invasive Phragmites reed that didn't slot quite as nicely into the natural balance. At the meeting of the forest and the bay, I could see trees beginning to tilt as the ground eroded from under them. According to the tour guide, the land there had once extended out even further. Erosion, of course, isn't a uniquely anthropogenic problem. But watching speedboats churn across the water, each pass sending waves towards the shore, gave me the distinct impression that in this case, at least, there were some fairly clear causes.
Of course, human activity in the area isn't all harmful to the environment. During my visit, I had a chance to learn about some of the plentiful research programs at the Center. On the marsh, amidst the brackish water and gently swaying cordgrass, sits the longest-running field experiment on carbon dioxide's impacts on wetlands. Started in 1987, the project continues to work to uncover more information about how climate change will impact plant growth, and the impact that this will have on the ecosystem. While it primarily focuses on the Chesapeake Bay, the implications that it has are applicable worldwide. Carbon dioxide concentrations will only increase with time, and the projections that the project allows for can better prepare us for the ways that ecosystems may shift as a result. Researchers at SERC also track the biodiversity of the area, marking the rise and fall in a variety of species over time. Through a combination of methods - taking censuses of the trees, comparing samples, and monitering keystone species such as otters - they get a better idea of the Bay's health, as well as the impacts that pollution and climate change are impacting it. This, in turn, has implications for the broader impacts of human activity, as well as the natural fluctuation of species over time.
It's important to remember, though, that SERC is more than just a research center. It does, of course, do research, but a large part of what makes the Center special is the ways that it can connect with the surrounding community. The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center provides a combination of tours, presentations, and volunteering opportunities for the community. In addition, the area is open to the public for hiking, biking, and kayaking from Monday through Saturday. One of the biggest outreach methods that SERC aims for is with its school and group field trips, which work to give students a hands-on experience with a variety of activities. Together, these efforts work fairly well at educating the public. Looking at the programs available for various age groups, the focus on students (particularly K-5) is clear. However, the Center's volunteering opportunities as well as its availability for hiking give it an appeal to a broad range of individuals - a fact emphasized by the variety of other groups we saw along the trails.