Event: Smithsonian Environmental Research Center Trip
Event time and place: Edgewater, Maryland on October 7th, 8am.
The Smithsonian Environmental Research Center,SERC, is a research center in Edgewater, Maryland. Its mission is researching, educating people, and focusing on local ecosystems. Around SERC, their scientists/researchers have been studying the impact of invasive species on the local ecosystems, mainly on invasive plant species. This is important because understanding the effects an invasive species has on an ecosystem can show the effects it will have on existing species/organisms. Sometimes a single species being wiped out could collapse an entire ecosystem. This is why its important to track and understand the effect these species have. They have also researched the affects of climate change, and how its been effecting the sea levels, temperature, and wildlife. Animals such as the diamondback terrapin have been dying out because they cant find food, and because of the effects of us humans such as destruction of their habitat and climate change. Understanding the effect climate change has on environments as a whole lets us know what we can do to help these animals and how to lessen the impact we have on them. One of the habitats we were able to observe on our trip was the marshes. These marshes were home to many animals such as sea otters, fish, turtles, and much more. Humans have had a negative impact on these places and have caused the water to become more unsafe, change the waters flow, and sometimes even draining them to make room for other things. Marshes are very crucial for environment because they help with irrigation and destroying these places can lead to massive flooding. Another habitat we saw was the forest. Human activities such as logging and pollution have lead to more animals being lead out of their own habitat. SERC does many things to educate the community, they host students like us and teach us their mission whilst having fun, they host public lectures so they can present out their findings(such as the number of animals, sea levels, temperature, invasive species, and numerous other miscellaneous data), and they also host various other groups and workshops which was the reason we were able to see other groups whilst on the trip. Overall, Id say their outreach methods are pretty effective because of the amount of people that participate and actually learn of their mission and support their goal. Im unsure whether they can connect with the average person around the surrounding area as its more geared towards students(could be wrong about this) but overall they are doing good work and I cant really see any other effective alternative.
