Smithsonian Research Center Trip:
10/4 8am-3pm:
The mission of the Smithsonian research center is to meet the environmental challenges of the 21st century. They focus immensely on issues that currently affect the environment, including Water quality, Fisheries, Invasive species, Conservation, Land use, Toxic chemicals, and Global change. They also educate people by creating hands-on education programs for children ages K-12. SERC has completed many missions including tree life and how certain factors can affect its growth and size. One experiment they conducted included brackish water, which forms in places where the river meets the ocean. This leads to more saltwater being in places where there's typically freshwater. The issue of brackish water is caused by climate change, and SERC had a mission to see how brackish water affects tree life. They discovered that this brackish water is killing tree life. After doing an experiment by increasing the amount of time trees were immersed in brackish water and seeing the results, after 48 hours they stopped the experiment in order to not kill the trees. The SERC also uses seining in order to detect the wildlife and biodiversity in the waters. Seining is a method scientists use in order to catch aquatic animals and plants in shallow water. People do this by dragging a large net through the water and pulling it onto shore. This helps us understand what kind of fish are in the water in certain seasons, the food chain, and how human activity can affect what species can survive. Therefore this method helps us understand what wildlife is in our waters and what affects it. This also shows how climate change affects ecosystems everywhere and not just locally. One habitat we see are the marshes, which are wetland areas covered by weeds, grasses and other plants. We learned that the plant's roots hold the soil in place and prevent it from washing away, which helps immensely with erosion. Therefore by doing this it protects the coastline and other wildlife. However, pollution caused by human activity has negatively affected marshes and harms aquatic life. As we hiked, we immersed ourselves in the wonderful forest habitat. We saw flurries of poison ivy on trees as well as many animals and insects. These forests are home to diverse wildlife and play a vital role in carbon dioxide storage. However, we discovered how immensely the rising water levels are affecting the forests and wildlife. Which illustrates how greatly climate change is affecting lives and ecosystems around us.