Happy Earth Day!

Today is Earth Day, and it's almost as old as I am. The event, that is, not the earth. Ahem.

Although I was only a toddler when the first Earth Day event occurred, I remember well the era of the hippie flower child: vivid memories of the bright pink, green, and yellow flower pattern pants I wore and of my mom painting brightly colored daisies on the rear fender of my dad's VW bug are still with me. I wish that Bug was, too.

Earth Day was founded by then US Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI), inspired by student anti-war protests and the devastating effects of a massive oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara. Seeking to channel protestors' energy into a common agenda to improve the environment, Nelson enlisted help from Congressman Pete McCloskey (R-CA) to serve as his co-chair. Together they rallied supporters and organized events across the country. Democrats and Republicans working together? Whoda thunk!

The stage had been set by the publication in 1962 of Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. I'm kicking myself for not picking up a copy at the second hand bookshop the other day, for I've never read it. The book sold half a million copies in 24 countries and raised awareness of the environment and all the living things that inhabit it.

Are you my mummy? (photo: time.com)

Fast forward forty-something odd years and that sense of hippie flower power is still with us. Until recently buzzwords like "green", "sustainability", "eco-friendly", "organic", etc. were used to excess and people are becoming more aware of the importance of clean air, water, energy, and food. 'Grow Your Own' has become a movement in its own right with more and more people ripping out their water and chemical loving lawns in favor of home grown veg (and getting fined for it, too). At the same time, high profile battles are being waged against oil lobbyists and mammoth corporations like Monsanto which give me pause and make me ask just how far have we come since 1970? Technological and scientific advancement is all well and good but when those advances are forced on the population for monetary gain, how is that good? It can be argued that GMO crops aren't making us or the earth well, either, so is all the blather really effecting any change?

Image from the movie Wall-E, which should be required viewing on Earth Day

As I sit here working on a business plan for starting up a CSA on the family farm, one thing is certain: every day in the garden should be Earth Day. In studying agricultural and horticultural methods used as recently as 100 years ago it's obvious that 'organic' and 'sustainable' are not new concepts, just new terms applied to traditional methods. Perhaps in order to go forward, we must look backward and pay attention to what we see there?

So how will you celebrate Earth Day? Cities and towns all over the world are sponsoring events so getting involved is easy: Picking up trash on the side of the road or in your local park, local habitat clean up or restoration, taking a class about the environment and stewardship, planting flowers in your town's high street to make it more enjoyable, maybe even peacefully protesting the use of harmful chemicals in your local public open spaces where kids and animals play. It could even be as simple as planting a flower bed in your own garden.

Photo: time.com

However you choose to spend the day, I hope you'll at least give some though to the Earth and what an excellent planet it is to live on. After all, we don't have many alternatives and, while the time each of us is on it is just a blip, many more generations are coming and we should leave them something worth living on.

Sittin' on the dock of Chesapeake Bay

This week's ecology trip took us on a bumpy van ride to the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center. With 510 acres under conservation, this former cattle, tobacco, wheat, and soy farm has become a model for natural restoration and conservation methods.

Our first encounter with the native wildlife was a Terrapin crossing the road as we cruised to the parking lot. It narrowly avoided becoming turtle soup!

Our guides for the day took us to different areas of the property where different types of conservation and restoration were taking place. The first stop was this small cove, a living shore line. Previously it had been overgrown and the view from a waterfront house obscured by invasive plants. The cove was cleared of unwanted vegetation and restored to resemble a natural habitat to lure local wildlife back for nesting and spawning. Plants were chosen for their nativity and ability to control erosion: Smooth Cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), Saltmeadow Hay (Spartina patens), and Switchgrass (Panicum virgatum). Incidentally, Saltmeadow Hay was used in the 1800's to stuff cheap mattresses and later the cushions of early automobiles.

What you can barely see in this photo is a bio-log. A what? A bio log. A log made from coconut fibers. Well, why not use a regular log, you ask? And what is the log for anyway? You've come to the right place because I'm going to tell you! Coir products have been used in the landscape industry for erosion control for eons. You've probably seen jute or coir blankets on slopes that have been recently graded or seeded to keep the soil from sliding down to the bottom until the planting takes hold. The logs do the same job only better where revegetating areas next to a shore line is concerned. The logs are made from compressed coir fibers in a tubular mesh netting and will biodegrade in 4 years or so. In the meantime, they keep the sandy soil from washing away with the tide and since they're a natural product, they provide a bit of organic matter to the site. The logs are made in Sri Lanka and we were told that a recent visitor from India who was studying the Center's methods inquired as to where he might be able to procure the logs, and was surprised to learn they were being produced in his own backyard! Small world, eh?

Way out in the bay there's also a man-made oyster bar and and artificial reef made from the recycled rubble of the Memorial Stadium demolition. The project was done wholistically, meaning the shore line, oyster bar, and reef were tackled simultaneously, not piecemeal. The project was completed in 2002. The following year Hurricane Isabel hit. After clean up, the area has been allowed to 'go native' insofar as the grasses that were planted were allowed to grow and the returning wildlife have imported seed from other native plants that have since established. All the plants installed by man were planted by hand, namely lots of school children and volunteers. The oyster bar was seeded with 7-million oysters. Interesting thing about our little mollusk friends - besides making a tasty Valentine's Day hors d'œuvre or spitting out pearls, they filter between 100-150 gallons of water a day. The current population is only about 1% of historic numbers due to pollution, fishing, etc., so improving water quality is a big deal when it comes to reestablishing the oyster population.

Even with all the native plants, invasives still, uh, invade. The mighty Phragmites is one such invader, colonizing and choking waterways far and wide. This pugnacious perennial can travel up to 1/4 mile, seeking out and destroying native habitat. The most effective control measures involve fire and lots of digging. The Center has tackled it with a combined strategy of burning and spraying with an aquatic safe herbicide with an enzyme that is specific to eradicating the weed. Stands of Phragmites claimed 10 acres of shoreline from one of the Center's fresh water lakes. Once the Phragmites was beaten back, the lake rebounded to 22 acres. One of the Center's goals is to educate waterfront homeowners about what they can do to help restore the bay, like retrofitting their septic system with a filter that can capture up to 90% of the nitrogen produced by a home septic system. Less nitrogen being dumped in the water means fewer of those algae blooms we keep reading about, and less harm to the fish and other organisms in the bay and ocean.

This area of marsh grass was very cool - acres of tide marsh pock-marked with brackish pools. A boardwalk led across the marsh to a look-out deck then continued to the shore.

This was my first encounter with a horseshoe crab. Being dead didn't lessen its formidable appearance. This is another ocean dweller whose numbers are declining from being overharvested. This one is female and measured over a foot long. Her male companion is in the background and is less than half her size.

Here she is with a blue crab shell for scale. Turns out these guys are good for measuring the quality of the ocean water. A compound made from the crab's blood can be used to measure bacteria and toxins in the water.

Another shoreline plant oddity is this squiggly mess. It's Salicornia, otherwise known as Glasswort. It's a succulent salt marsh dweller that is also edible. Supposedly it's delicious sauteed in butter and olive oil. Eaten raw, it tastes remarkably like ocean. Butterfly larvae like it, too, making it a valuable wildlife food source. Why the name Glasswort? Boy, you're just full of questions today, aren't you? Well, it's your lucky day - the ashes of Salicornia, Saltwort plants, and kelp were a source of sodium carbonate, used in glassmaking.

The Center's switchgrass meadow, which used to be the site of an ultralight runway (you know, those little one-seater airplane jobbers that are used to lead flocks of geese to wherever geese are supposed to go. If you saw the film Fly Away Home, you know what I'm talking about) is managed but is being allowed to undergo succession - to a point. Succession is where one plant community replaces another. It's a common natural phenomena that occurs in disturbed sites. This area is kept as a meadow by prescribed burning every three to five years. Burning controls invasive weed species while allowing the grasses to rejuvenate.

Another resident critter was this cute little snake. He happened across our path as we were walking to see the owls. Our guide told us this one must have been the offspring of a snake that lives under their office because is was smaller than the other one. Given this one measured a good 5-feet, I wasn't too worried about not getting a glimpse of mama!

As I said, we were on our way to see the owls.

It's always cool to get a peek at wildlife up close and personal - or at least as close and personal as a chain link fence will let you get - but there was also something dispiriting about seeing them confined. I couldn't help but think about the hawks soaring over the forest at Longwood and tried to imagine these magnificent birds floating through the night air. I hope they were rescued, and that their life now is better and longer than what it might have been. These enclosures were the only thing about this nature preserve that was glaringly unnatural.

Returning to our van, a few of us plucked bunches of wild grapes from the vines rampaging over the bayberry shrubs (boy, did they make you pucker!). How many field trips offer lessons in restoration techniques, a peek at oceanic wildlife habitat, and a natural snack?! The Chesapeake Bay Environmental Center gets a big thumbs up from me!

May your rivers flow without end

Living in So Cal I tended to encounter two types of people: beach people and mountain people. You'd think, given my proximity to the ocean and the fact that I learned how to swim before I learned how to walk, that I would be a beach person. I wasn't. Nor was I a mountain person. Thus I was forced to dither about in a sort of no-man's land. Having now lived on the East Coast for the past few years, I finally discovered a new category in which to place myself: I'm a stream person. Stream people are not to be confused with river rats - rivers are too large and moody for my taste. Take the Brandywine River, which overflowed its banks and flooded Route 1 in the last big storm. Because of that, I was forced to sit in traffic for over an hour, finally abandoning my intended destination in order to take the long way home, which meant another 45 minutes on the road. All that to go 5 miles, and all because the river had to go and throw a hissy and cover the street, which put me in a bad mood as well.

Streams are much more my speed - they meander and talk to you in a pleasant splashy gurgle, wandering through leafy glades or tranquil woodlands, never seeming to be in a hurry unless they decide to scamper playfully for a bit before again assuming their leisurely pace. And you can usually find the occasional water fowl or forest critter frolicking in a pool or basking in the sun bank side, perusing the latest issue of Forest Weekly. Rivers are good for those with power boats or jet skis, streams are calming and, with the amount of coursework being piled on us, I'll take calm any way I can get it! This is why one of my all time favorite places to relax and enjoy a good meal is on the patio at a local tavern. This is what I get to look at while I eat:

And so it happened that today's ecological learning expedition (fancy talk for 'field trip') turned out to be quite enjoyable for me because it was focused on a stream. The Stroud Water Research Center in Avondale, PA was founded 40 years ago by a woman named Ruth Patrick. Ms. Patrick was a scientist with the Academy of Natural Sciences and found herself being asked about the health of local waterways, which she was unable to ascertain because she had never seen a 'healthy' stream. She urged her friends, Joan and Dick Stroud, to establish a lab dedicated to freshwater research on their farm in Chester County. Since the White Clay Creek flows through the property, it made perfect sense to the Strouds, and the Stroud Water Research Center was born.

Now covering over 1000 acres, the center studies how manipulating the land affects water quality. With over 40 years' worth of data on the White Clay Creek, I'd say they've gotten pretty good at what they do. They study how water quality and stream life is affected by forestation, reforestation, meadowland, urban development and so on and offered a perfectly logical explanation for why the Brandywine jumped its banks during that storm but the White Clay didn't. You see, when rain falls on a forest the water is slowed by the leaves and spread out over a larger area. It also flows along the branches and down the trunks to the ground where it has a better chance of soaking into the soil, allowing thirsty roots to slurp it up. This means less run off goes charging into the creek which means less chance of flooding. What water does make its way to the stream does so by percolating through the soil which slows it down quite a bit so the stream isn't overwhelmed. The water level will rise somewhat, but flooding doesn't happen with each and every storm. Compare that to the scenario at the Brandywine where the flood occurred: instead of hitting tree canopies the rain hit rooftops. And instead of being channeled down tree trunks to the ground, it was directed down storm drains to the parking lot. No wonder the river threw a hissy fit!

For those who are fans of our natural watersheds but live in a developed area, take heart. Even you can help prevent wanton water run-off by simply installing a rain barrel to capture rain water. Better yet, plant a rain garden that will help slow water sluicing off your driveway or parking lot. Many municipalities - particularly on the west coast, like this neighborhood in Sun Valley - have begun implementing water management strategies that include rain gardens, infiltration pits, permeable paving, etc. to keep water in the ground instead of allowing it to run willy-nilly into the storm drains.

I also learned that a natural stream meanders. No one knows why water meanders but it does. Even if you pour a stream of water across a smooth surface it won't run in a straight line. There are also different geographies in a stream - there are pools, which are typically deep and still; riffles, where the water moves faster over rocks and gravel; and runs, where the water moves more quickly in a shallower bed without rocks. Given my classmates' uncanny ability to shoot off one-liners and the fact that a few of us are suffering from head colds, I was surprised at the lack of jokes about having a case of the riffles.

Ahem.

Turns out, these features of a stream are more than cosmetic. The riffles serve to oxygenate the water. The runs and pools offer habitats and food sources for all the stream dwellers. Here's another tidbit about natural streams - the leaves from the canopy overhead are what form the basis of the food chain. Whodathunk? This is why, when the state of PA proposed legislation to plant 100 foot buffers of riparian forest along stream banks, native floodplain species such as red maple, river birch, and sycamore became the trees of choice. The leaves fall into the water and provide a food source for the invertebrates which are in turn food sources for the vertebrates, and the merry food chain perpetuates itself. You didn't think fish and ducks all subsist on pellets and breadcrumbs tossed at them by small children and pensioners, did you? Other benefits that trees provide to a natural stream system are the habitats and food stores.

Sometimes a tree dies and falls over, or just plain falls over. At Stroud, the tree is left to decay along the bank or, in the case of the Sycamore above that fell then sent up lateral shoots, is allowed to lay across the stream creating an instant bridge for the resident critters (which really cuts down on commuting when you're a squirrel out acorn shopping) not to mention the fact that certain insects only lay their eggs on the undersides of fallen logs. No fallen logs, no place to lay eggs. No eggs to hatch, no insects. No insects, no food chain. No food chain, no critters. No critters, and your stream is dead, Jim!

Some of the research done at Stroud includes measuring carbon transport through the ecosystem. To do this, material is taken from upstream and collected in tanks where it's allowed to settle for 3-5 days, being gently shaken and stirred to prevent flocculation. The resultant particles, called sestons, are collected. It takes about one cubic meter of stream material to get half a gallon of seston. The particles are mixed with a saline solution and poured into these 30 meter long flumes.

There are four flumes in all, with two covered in bio film to keep the light out. Those two are also treated with a bleach solution so keep them from getting too icky. Rocks and gravel are placed in the flumes to mimic the stream bed and the particles' travel is measured. Similar studies have used fluorescent beads or seed pods from Lycopodium (a type of club moss).

Another study taking place in the greenhouse looks at the effects of phosphorus in the water. In other words, what the stuff that comes out of your washing machine does to your local water system. You're all familiar with TSP - I used to use it to scrub the walls before painting. Turns out trisodium phosphate is one of the chief culprits (along with other eco-unfriendly chemicals) contributing to the algae blooms we keep hearing so much about . The flumes in the greenhouse each contain different levels of phosphorus and, as such, differing levels of algae growth.

The stringy green algae isn't to be confused with the furry brown algae called diatom. Diatom is good. Stringy green gunk is bad. So if you are fortunate enough to own a stream or pond or man-made water feature and notice the rocks and bottom covered in a velvety brown, you are to rejoice knowing that all your microscopic invertebrate friends will never go hungry because Diatom is their most important food source!

Doesn't that make you happy!?

Along with all kinds of highly scientific stuff that's way over my head, Stroud also monitors the stream's water quality. For the last 18 years Stroud has partnered with The White Clay Watershed Association's (WCWA) Stream Watch Program to collect macroinvertebrates (those little guys you can't see without a super-duper microscope but which are the best indication of how healthy - or not - your stream is) and take readings on water chemistry. The map below shows the water quality in several spots along the creek system.

(photo from http://stroudcenter.org/research/streamwatch/study_map.html)

This field trip was not only educational, it was very enjoyable. Where else do you get the chance to learn about such an amazing natural ecological system by actually following the stream on its meandering path? Now when I'm enjoying my lunch on the tavern's patio I'll be able to gaze down into the stream and identify the riffles and runs, will be able to tell with a somewhat educated guess what's causing the stringy green gunk to grow and how to prevent it, and will have a whole new appreciation for the fervor of microscopic life being carried on in so seemingly serene a setting. I don't know about you, but sitting next to a stream contemplating life has just taken on a whole new meaning!