unsung victims of the DC Snowpocalypse

The +2' of snow that hit DC this weekend has surprised and wreaked havoc on many. For example, the federal government, city schools and universities, and many other businesses have been closed over the weekend, Monday, and Tuesday, at a significant economic loss (partially recovered in sales of snow shovels and hot chocolate?). But the unsung victims in this storm, in my opinion, are the Washington street trees.

As the snow started to accumulate on Friday night, I heard a loud *crack* in the courtyard of my building, and saw the first fallen branch. A large branch from an >80 year old tree had smashed another small tree below it. Several other trees in my courtyard also lost large branches, bending and breaking under the weight of 26" of wet snow. Walking the city streets, I saw other casualties.



A few years ago in Providence, RI, they had a tree tally, where volunteers (including me!) identified and counted the street trees for a public record. (There are nearly 25k street trees in Providence, in case you were wondering.) I haven't found such a dataset for DC, although there is a city Urban Forestry Administration. Beyond my anecdotes, it'd be interesting to know the scale of the damage to the city's trees from Snowpocalypse 2010.

winter in the intertidal

I was out in the sub-freezing weather in Rhode Island this weekend to set up succession plots and settlement plates to measure barnacle recruitment, which has already begun! (See a slideshow of last year's recruits here.) There's nothing like seawater freezing on your double-gloved hands to make you feel alive!

I expected the rocky intertidal fauna that had the option to ride out the extreme cold buried in the mud, but I was surprised to see many of the mobile critters out and about during the extreme low tides (-0.5 m or -1.6 ft, nearly 0.5 m lower than the predicted low tide, probably due to wind). Seastars were remarkably abundant, and I also saw a lady crab, Ovalipes ocellatus, a swimming crab that I rarely find in the intertidal (the Kunkel lab at UMass Amherst has a good lady crab photo here).

SEASTAR TRAPPED IN ICE IN THE HIGH INTERTIDAL


BARNACLES ENCASED IN ICE

science the searchlight

I am teaching Environmental Science at American University this spring, and in class today we discussed Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. This quote spoke to me:

"We see repeated the same basic paradoxes: Man the conqueror versus man the biotic citizen; science the sharpener of his sword versus science the searchlight of his universe; land the slave and servant versus land the collective organism."

To me, the concept of "science as sword versus searchlight" pertains to the use of technology to degrade versus restore the environment. However, I think the metaphor also suggests science as a path to enlightenment.

This little light o' mine...I'm gonna let it shine. Let it shine, let it shine, let it shine....

Hopenhagen

The 15th annual UN Climate Change Conference, COP15, opened ceremoniously in Copenhagen yesterday. Over the last few days, there has been a tug of war between the hopeful and the pessimistic about whether this conference will result in consensus or policy action. I'm among the hopeful, buoyed by the push towards action by the Obama administration, which is ready to talk numbers and commitments (a 17% cut in 2005 emissions by 2020 is on the table - not very ambitious, but a start), the EPA's fresh announcement that it will regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and the coverage of Copenhagen by the American press, which seems to me more intense than of past conferences - all positive indications that negotiations will make progress towards international carbon and climate regulation. My sentiments are perfectly described by the conference's concert event series, Hopenhagen, a Danish-English hybrid that rings with European cool and American optimism.

Tasking the Task Force

This evening, I submitted a comment to the Ocean Policy Task Force as follows:

Thank you for the opportunity to comment. I attended the Task Force’s public forum in Providence, RI, and I have been impressed by the participatory environment that you have created for developing a plan to manage and conserve ocean resources and ecosystems.

I would like to speak for an ocean-dependent industry that is not always considered as a user-group – marine scientists. I am a marine biologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. My livelihood depends on access to the sea and marine resources, not unlike the fishermen and ferrymen who spoke at the forum. I have found that most of the shoreline is restricted access across private property and that even public property managers are often hesitant to allow research. This is doubly true for manipulative field research, which can be disruptive but is the most telling and mechanistic type of science. There is little intertidal and underwater space set aside for research.

I have benefited greatly from the National Estuarine Research Reserve System, a network of 27 coastal reserves designated for research activities. They have funded my work, and, almost more importantly, they own coastal ecosystems where I can do science. Using field experiments in these reserves, I have developed predictions of how valuable coastal wetlands will respond to global warming. This is the kind of vital knowledge managers and policymakers will need to anticipate the effects of global change on ecosystems and to head off deleterious effects on human communities.

The interim report calls to “use the best available science and knowledge to inform decisions affecting the ocean, our coasts, and the Great Lakes.” I am a scientist who would like to provide that information in the coming decades. Please enable research by maintaining access for governmental and non-governmental researchers when you are planning for the diverse users of our coastal oceans.

Read more about the Ocean Policy Task Force, charged with developing a recommendation for a national policy for our oceans, coasts, and the Great Lakes, on the Council on Environmental Quality's webpage.

scallopfest

At the Bourne Scallop Festival, they will be serving up over 3 tons of scallops to more than 55,000 visitors this weekend! I partook in the deliciousness last night, and savoring the bounty of scallops made me thankful that the Georges Bank fishery closure area has resurrected the New England sea scallop fishery.

clam seed

I took a trip to the newly expanded shellfish hatchery at Roger Williams University over the Labor Day weekend. Karin Tammi, the hatchery manager, gave me a tour and tutorial on how to spawn, settle, and grow oysters and quahogs, from larvae to spat (newly metamorphosed bivalves) to juvenile and reproductive adult. (FYI, I have a new fascination with bivalves, and, if you frequent maritima, you're sure to hear more.)

It's hard to avoid an interest in quahogs living in Little Rhody, the Ocean State, home to one of the most productive quahog fisheries in the country (8% of the national market share in 1997, down from 25% in 1985, Source: Rice et al. 2000). You can find families digging seaside at many public access beaches, and any real Rhody has their favorite quahogging spots and techniques, though they may not be willing to share these secrets.

You might be surprised to find out that the quahog fishery is supplemented in several ways. Quahogs are moved from the Providence River, where water quality is poor, to areas in Narragansett Bay where water quality is better. Collected quahogs have also been used to found spawner sanctuaries in grounds closed to shellfishing. Additionally, hatchery reared juveniles are added, or seeded, in areas, notably Greenwich Bay, where I collected the quahog below. You can see a distinct color change in the shell indicating a change in the environmental conditions where it was living (e.g. from a hatchery to the Bay).

From maritima